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The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

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Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Not a "good" secularist according to your definition. I don't consider my parents "stupid" for continuing their Catholic beliefs. I just don't get it.

Not at all. I respect and admire you and your fine parents. Salt of the earth. Good people. The best.
This conversation went wrong somewhere.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Not at all. I respect and admire you and your fine parents. Salt of the earth. Good people. The best.
This conversation went wrong somewhere.

I went to a Catholic HS and was fairly devout. My parents and I divided, religiously-speaking, sometime during my freshman year at Tech. I stopped going shortly after moving up there, and by the time I was a sophomore they stopped asking - it was mutually beneficial. Looking back, I think the molestation coverups had a lot to do with it. Also, the Constitutional law class I took as a freshman.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Not a "good" secularist according to your definition. I don't consider my parents "stupid" for continuing their Catholic beliefs. I just don't get it.
Same here. I quit the church in my teens but I've never had any feeling that my parents who continued going and believing were in any way negative.

geezer has to work on his over-broad, ill-informed, irrelevant counterattacks.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Looking back, I think the molestation coverups had a lot to do with it.
That hit my parents very hard. It didn't change their spiritual values, but it did give them a different view of the church as an institution. It wasn't so much the molestations (which they still ascribe to "a few bad apples") but the hypocritical cover-up that disgusted them with the hierarchy.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!


Shuttling offending priests around after they'd had "therapy" and foisting them on unsuspecting parishes guaranteed there would be more abuse. And was inexcusable. Treating children who had been abused as potential plaintiffs, instead of victims in need of spiritual and emotional help, was worse.
 
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Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Same here. I quit the church in my teens but I've never had any feeling that my parents who continued going and believing were in any way negative.

geezer has to work on his over-broad, ill-informed, irrelevant counterattacks.

If you are professing a tolerance (dare I say respect?) for Christianity, then you're right, and I apologize for taking all your previous hateful remarks as evidence for your hatred of it.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

If you are professing a tolerance (dare I say respect?) for Christianity, then you're right, and I apologize for taking all your previous hateful remarks as evidence for your hatred of it.
I hate fundamentalism in all religions -- it takes a working brain and turns it into a deadweight fist.

If you take that and turn it into a supposed indictment of all religion, you certainly don't know anything about me and you may not know a lot about religion either.

Or you may just be trying to score a point through deliberate obfuscation, in which case, sorry no.
 
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Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Hey is Peter King the biggest fuking idiot in the House or what? Caught him on CNN last night ginning up a fake story about Obama releasing the blind cleric responsible for the first WTC bombing into Egyptian custody. Three different agencies, Homeland Security, State Department and Justice Department all issue statements saying no way, and the idiot is trying parse words declaring that for example when State says he'll be in prison for the rest of his life and there's no plans for transfer, that could mean he'll be in prison in Egypt and just because there's no plans for a transfer doesn't mean it won't happen later. I mean, the guy looks and sounds like a drunk. Who elects this bozo?
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Hey is Peter King the biggest fuking idiot in the House or what? Caught him on CNN last night ginning up a fake story about Obama releasing the blind cleric responsible for the first WTC bombing into Egyptian custody. Three different agencies, Homeland Security, State Department and Justice Department all issue statements saying no way, and the idiot is trying parse words declaring that for example when State says he'll be in prison for the rest of his life and there's no plans for transfer, that could mean he'll be in prison in Egypt and just because there's no plans for a transfer doesn't mean it won't happen later. I mean, the guy looks and sounds like a drunk. Who elects this bozo?

He is a bozo. He's not afraid to spout serious charges close to treason at President Obama with no evidence to back it up. I don't know how he survives it to be honest.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Hey is Peter King the biggest fuking idiot in the House or what?
He is probably second to Patty Murray for being literally the stupidest person in Congress now that Jim Bunning has retired. It's a close race between him and Heath Shuler*.

For a combination of being stupid AND irresponsible, he's in Joe McCarthy / Carol Moseley Braun / Allen West territory.

(* I forgot Barbara Boxer. She's somewhere on that list too).
 
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Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

I hate fundamentalism in all religions -- it takes a working brain and turns it into a deadweight fist.

If you take that and turn it into a supposed indictment of all religion, you certainly don't know anything about me and you may not know a lot about religion either.

Or you may just be trying to score a point through deliberate obfuscation, in which case, sorry no.

I still don't know for sure what caused all the angst. I wasn't trying to bash religion, but was sarcastically pointing out the absurdity of Romney and Obama stereotyping all the poor people.
anyway;
On another point, I don't feel good about the recent corruption (at large, not you) of the word "fundamental". If some religious person is fundamentally peaceful and loving to all God's creatures, is that such a bad thing? We need another descriptor to describe the "fundamentalists" most people are talking about when they say it.

also; it's good if you can see good and bad differences withing "Christianity" the umbrella term. But that ability doesn't always come through, for example if you attack the bible generally or blaspheme God specifically as you and Foxton often do. It just comes across as vengeful hatred over something gone horribly wrong in your childhood. Even if that's not at all the actual case. (although I think Foxton once said he hates Christians because one of them took his lunch money one time)
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

also; it's good if you can see good and bad differences withing "Christianity" the umbrella term. But that ability doesn't always come through, for example if you attack the bible generally or blaspheme God specifically as you and Foxton often do. It just comes across as vengeful hatred over something gone horribly wrong in your childhood. Even if that's not at all the actual case. (although I think Foxton once said he hates Christians because one of them took his lunch money one time)

OK, if that is the case I apologize for coming across that way.

My thinking about religion is best summed up in books like A History of God (Armstrong), Doubt (Hecht), and the writing of Charles Taylor (no, not that one. Or that one). I believe religion, along with law, government, science and art, is one of the greatest and most significant institutions ever created by humanity. I believe it is for the vast part neither good nor bad but simply a "social fact" of human history, culture, and identity. I try to read in it and learn about it for the same reason I want to know something about those other human activities.

That's why I am deeply offended when someone takes a very deep and fundamental aspect of humanity and turns it into a twisted, cynical, inane tool for political and social oppression. Fundamentalism, wherever it festers, is:

+ dangerous (as we are seeing in the Islamic world now, and as we have seen throughout history in all faiths)
+ poisonous (it works to literally extinguish other worldviews -- it suffocates human-ness)
+ stupid (it is based on the most basic of errors -- mistaking a map for the territory, a metaphor for truth, a model for reality)
+ deceitful (when your soul is at stake literally any lie is justified)

Religion is worth talking about. Fundamentalist religion is just humanity's raw psychopathic id with a good press agent.
 
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Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

OK, if that is the case I apologize for coming across that way.

My thinking about religion is best summed up in books like A History of God (Armstrong), Doubt (Hecht), and the writing of Charles Taylor (no, not that one. Or that one). I believe religion, along with law, government, science and art, is one of the greatest and most significant institutions ever created by humanity. I believe it is for the vast part neither good nor bad but simply a "social fact" of human history, culture, and identity. I try to read in it and learn about it for the same reason I want to know something about those other human activities.

That's why I am deeply offended when someone takes a very deep and fundamental aspect of humanity and turns it into a twisted, cynical, inane tool for political and social oppression. Fundamentalism, wherever it festers, is:

+ dangerous (as we are seeing in the Islamic world now, and as we have seen throughout history in all faiths)
+ poisonous (it works to literally extinguish other worldviews -- it suffocates human-ness)
+ stupid (it is based on the most basic of errors -- mistaking a map for the territory, a metaphor for truth, a model for reality)
+ deceitful (when your soul is at stake literally any lie is justified)

Religion is worth talking about. Fundamentalist religion is just humanity's raw psychopathic id with a good press agent.

I have a lot of appreciation for this "voice of reason" stance. I agree with you insofar that I don't want some group running our country based on their own particular religious views.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

I hate fundamentalism in all religions -- it takes a working brain and turns it into a deadweight fist.

If you take that and turn it into a supposed indictment of all religion, you certainly don't know anything about me and you may not know a lot about religion either.

Or you may just be trying to score a point through deliberate obfuscation, in which case, sorry no.
I think the word "fundamentalism" has become so loaded that it's hard to step back from it and talk about what's really going on. Really, if you think about the word, being fundamental just means you strongly hold the core beliefs of a given religion. I assume you don't have a problem with people who have deeply held religious beliefs as long as they don't foist those on others? But of course there is the rub. In particular Christians in our society can have their beliefs (and stay behind closed doors in their homes with them) but they get blasted if they espouse issues or vote according to their beliefs, just like every other person on the face of the planet does. It's ok to hold any position under the sun on any issue if you come to that position in any way, as long as religion doesn't help you get there. Total double standard, but it's been a successful attack strategy for awhile now, so I don't expect it'll be abandoned.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

I think the word "fundamentalism" has become so loaded that it's hard to step back from it and talk about what's really going on. Really, if you think about the word, being fundamental just means you strongly hold the core beliefs of a given religion.
Maybe that is the source of our disagreement. I am speaking of fundamentalism as literalism -- the belief that scriptural statements and religious practices are non-metaphorical fact-statements. If someone holds that view they can't compromise -- there is only room on the planet for them.
 
Re: The 4th Global War on Terror - Deja vu all over again!

Maybe that is the source of our disagreement. I am speaking of fundamentalism as literalism -- the belief that scriptural statements and religious practices are non-metaphorical fact-statements. If someone holds that view they can't compromise -- there is only room on the planet for them.

Correct.
 
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