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The warmongers may want to have a read at The Prayer, something przxqgl provides, attributed to Mark Twain but unpublished.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

[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...