Over the mid-week hump.

[silveradept]

We start with a moment of clarity, presenting by far, the best comment about why one should not pass gay marriage bans. (Although, according to thewayne's journal, the quotes may not be precise. Unfortunately, the people in charge don't seem to have come up with anything clear or interesting, as they've changed the rules of security clearances so thatorientation might be used in conjunction with some other possible disqualifier to deny a clearance request.

The warmongers may want to have a read at The Prayer, something przxqgl provides, attributed to Mark Twain but unpublished. It sums up the mentality of war well. And beyond that, some quites, arguably taken out of their contexts, but in number enough that point out that religions have a history of espousing violence.

That bit we excerpted yesterday about Jerry Falwell denying Jews the right to go to heaven. Well, here it is, in all its full-fledged glory. Falwell still believes all Jews go to Hell.

An interesting pairing - the article is about hyper-perception and the insights it can gather, the comments are vicious about differing opinions, claims of a hive mentality, defenses and attacks, ripostes and counters. The comments are far greater in volume than the original post. I'm not entirely sure why it strikes me as profound and fascinating, but it does.

Ah, yes, it was the Ides of March. The Madness will soon be upon us. Those who pick their brackets will do well or poorly by their own hands... mweh-heh-heh... I on the other hand, have very little invested in it, other than trying my hand at semi-random guessing and trying for a nice high score.

One other thing, and it seems an odd request. If anyone has experience in building, buying, or designing information collection and analysis systems, can I pick your brain for a bit? I want to know what's important, what sort of materials are needed, and how much the thing is likely to cost...

Tucking in now. Tomorrow, go print off a sheaf of papers, and actually do some more work on the blasted papers...

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Well, here it is, in all its full-fledged glory. Falwell still believes all Jews go to Hell.

so does half of me go to heaven and half to hell? :p

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can get in half the time. Time Share in Heaven or something, spend part of the summer there.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

hahaha sounds great! Where do i sign up?

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, probably with some religion or other.

[silveradept]

Probably requires a name change to Persephone or something like that, though.

[shenalia.livejournal.com]

Love the first one!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

What exactly are you talking about for information collection/analysis? I've been a database programmer for 20 years and might be of some assistance, then again, maybe I won't be. :-)

[silveradept]

Well, I'm building a fictitional system for a fictitional company that wants to track several variables like sales volume, profits, customer satisfaction, and the like. So they need an information system of some sort, both to collect the data and to interpret and crunch numbers on it. If you can help with something like that, it would be appreciated.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

To be fair to Falwell, he's totally consistent with conventional Christian doctrine on this one, IIRC.
You don't go to heaven unless you accept Christ as your personal saviour.

So, if you're of Falwell's persuasion (and hence don't believe in Limbo or Purgatory, apparently) there's only one place left for non-Christians (including Jewish people, who don't get a free pass just for having the religion that spawned Christianity) to go...

[silveradept]

It's one of those things I don't quite get - after all, Christians borrow from a lot of the Jewish writings (an entire testament of them), yet Falwell's type then turn around and say "Oh, no. You did well, ushering in our Messiah, but because you don't believe in him, you're getting no rewards for it" seems, well, counterintuitive.

At least the Muslims say that the People of the Book worship the same God as they do - they might not believe in the final revelation of Mohammed, but they do at least say that Jews and Christians should be accorded some respect.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Well, technically, that's because Christians would argue that, by not converting to Christianity (like the original Apostles did), the Jewish people failed to listen to him.

Christians do, like Muslims, agree that Jewish people worship the same god (or at least, some of them do)... it's just that the manner in which they do so is not correct. (Also, Muslims and Jews agree on the one matter that Jesus wasn't the Son of God - but then, so did many Christians before the Nicene Council firmly decided upon the Doctrine of the Trinity^*, take Arius, for example...)

^*Of course, before the Nicene Council, the Trinity may have been a majority belief in Christianty—we just don't know for sure...

[silveradept]

It still seems a bit silly to claim damnation and hellfire for worshiping the same god, but not in the Correct Fashion. Differences in ritual somehow translating to differences in salvation... hrm, maybe it really is about the Old God, who rains punishment on people for stepping even the tinies bit out of line, rather than the more forgiving intercessor that Christ was supposed to be...

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Well, remember, from the Christian perspective, the sacrifice of Christ was supposed to redeem us of our Original Sin.

But! To benefit from this, you have to accept Christ as the Son of God (and hence, presumably, accept the "true" nature of his sacrifice).
If you don't do that, it doesn't matter if you worship the same deity... you're going down.

[silveradept]

...definitely the God of the Old Testament, then...

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

I still say the best sollution is to ban government-controlled marriage. Marriage is an institution of religion, not of the state. Let the state grant civil unions without discrimination. Let the church decide who is married and who is sinning.

After all, in the eyes of some churches, your marriage is not legitimate unless you had the ceremony in their church. *Koff koff kathlik koff* So why not go the extra mile and eliminate marriage, to be replaced with civil union. Let divorce carry the same procedure as civil unions (ie, keep it difficult), but for the disruption of a union and not of a marriage.

The United States is not a Theocracy, and I believe it does the church a disservice to ask it to be one.

Have the best

-=TK

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

If I remember right a couple of European countries do this already. To be legally married you have to go to the town hall or where ever the particular office is to get all the papers and things signed, it can't be done at the church at the same time.

[silveradept]

That opinion, it seems, is strongly in the minority. Theocracy is an "in" thing smong people who have the resources to lobby for it.

Not that I don't wholeheartedly agree with your opinion, though. Churches can be discretionary about who they marry, bu tthey shouldn't be able to prevent a union from being recognized by the law.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Also, the link about how "religions have a history of violence" fails on various levels. Most importantly: it fails to make the distinction that most of the atrocities performed under the banner of religion happened when those religions were in the position of power. In other words: ideologies of the powerful cause violent acts (this then works better with other atrocities caused by non-religious ideologies).

Secondly, it makes the utterly stupid step of quotin g from the Old Testament and saying "Wow, Christianity is violent!" No, Old Testament Judaism is violent—contextually, just as violent as every other grouping at the time. The only violent quotes they get from the New Testament are the ones about Jesus telling people to arm themselves with a Sword (which may be connected to the possible association of Jesus with the Jewish resistance against Roman occupation at the time), and things from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which is just Paul being an arse (and a Roman arse, too!).

[silveradept]

Both solid points, caps. Says something about the way things are likely to go if/when Christianity takes over political power here, doesn't it?