Yeah, let's bring morality of Jesus back like killing off fruitless trees or:


Matthew 10:34
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Luke 12:51
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Luke 22:36
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Revelation 19:11
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Matthew 7:19-21
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Luke 12:46-47
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.


In other words, keep your retarded shiat on both sides to yourself and out of politics. Don't claim to read one Bible while ignoring the stuff you don't agree with and claim it's holy. farkin sick of it.

I pray to supply side Jesus

so the Easter Bunny comes out of his tomb, lays some chocolate eggs, and if he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of Santa Claus.

then we get Jesus McNuggets and wine for Sunday Dinner.

I think that's it---I might have missed something along the way.....

I don't believe in Jesus, but my voters do.

Oh Jesus Christ...

In before people posting without having read the farking article... oh wait, too slow.

I think the more important questions is where Gandalf's politics lay.

Wow, this dude is gonna wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, his article made WAY too much sense...

Look, dude, you're just cherry-picking different parts of the Bible that the other Christians are. It's nice that the parts your cherry-picking are more socially progressive, tolerant, accepting, loving, and just nicer than the parts the other folks are cherry-picking, but let's stop with the "No true Christian" nonsense. Your religion is, overall, very contradictory and contains mutually exclusive beliefs if taken in totality. That's why everyone cherry-picks the parts they like and (try to) follow, and ignore all the rest. Stop resting your inner desire to be a stand-up citizen on a religious conviction that is equally applicable to the people whose inner desires are to be dictatorial, hateful maniacs (à la Santorum). Just be a good person and let the religious stuff fall by the wayside.

FTA:

The final court decision is not on a par with Jesus' passion, nor is Obama to be confused with the Messiah

BLASPHEME!!!1!

Burn in hell, you Catholic fark bag!! Bow down before the Great Fartbongo, and receive your punishment!

In the U.S. Jesus is the whore you must be caught screwing if you want to get elected.

Why do we have to keep bringing up Jesus? Like I told you before, I didn't know about his immigration status!

If a man today were spouting off what Jesus said, the Republican party would have excoriated him as an evil, communist devil.

I don't mind if you are a religious politician. Have faith, but please, for the love of god, don't use it to pander and gain votes.

And the moment you start trying to legislate your morality based on a book of handed down oral traditions, heavily edited, transcribed, and rewritten several times based on the popular politics of the day, well, no sir, I don't like it, and I will fight you tooth and nail.

Jesus is going into politics? Sheesh...and here I thought he was just the guy who comes on Tuesdays to mow the lawn.

On April Fool's people are tricked into believing things that aren't true, which kind of makes it a religious holiday.

/got nuthin'

You can worship whatever Republican Jesus you want.

I love how the far-right so-called Christians feel the need to skip the part about "Giving Caesar his" when it comes to denouncing taxes.

Seriously, is there any part of the Christian religion that is actually being practiced at all in this country?

stpauler: Yeah, let's bring morality of Jesus back like killing off fruitless trees or:


Matthew 10:34
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Luke 12:51
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Luke 22:36
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Revelation 19:11
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Matthew 7:19-21
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Luke 12:46-47
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.


In other words, keep your retarded shiat on both sides to yourself and out of politics. Don't claim to read one Bible while ignoring the stuff you don't agree with and claim it's holy. farkin sick of it.

Not that you care about anything I think. (For the record, I'm not Christian, hold no religious beliefs at all.) But first, Revelations--that's complete foolishness. You can separate fools from normal Christians just by looking for the ones who don't realize that Revelations is tripe, pure demagoguery written up later to grind an axe. It's kind of like somebody slipping a copy of a comic book called "Lurid Tales from the Dark Side" into the writings of Jung.

As for the rest of your quotes. Most, if not all of them, were probably inserted after the fact, when it became expedient to start marketing the early church to Jews, especially those in the zealot camp. They weren't interested in universal peace and brotherhood. They were interested in war with Rome (which they got, eventually, and that pretty much meant the end of coherent Judaism in Israel for quite a while).

I don't think the things that Jesus says in the rest of the gospels jibes at all with this kind of thing, this fire-and-brimstone, watch-out-or-else stuff. Most of his sayings can be summed up as, turn over a new leaf, the kingdom of God is at hand. The core message (to my ears) was, "Good news, it's not too late, you can turn yourself around, we can all make it together. But the time is now, right now this very minute. No delays and no excuses."

I don't doubt that Jesus had his contradictions, and his more sour moments, and I can't prove that any one passage is or is not inserted after the fact, but I've always thought that there are two very different (in fact, opposite) characters in the gospels, and that, to me, indicates tinkering with the text.

Kind of like the famous "quote" of Paul about how women should shut up in church, in the very same book where he praises a female colleague, especially the way she preaches in church.

/Again, I read the Bible but I don't believe any of it, hold no religious beliefs

For almost as long as we have been a church, Catholic ritual for Palm Sunday has dramatized that people who greeted Jesus with "Hosannas"

Her?

An article about Jesus in politics that makes sense?

Nah

I don't believe it.

Mikey1969: Wow, this dude is gonna wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, his article made WAY too much sense...

One of the reasons I'm nicer regarding Catholics than most branches of Christianity is that they're capable of having internal arguments without breaking up into more damned factions and each side claiming only theirs is true Christianity. They grew out of excommunicating dissidents after the Galileio thing.

Well, I mean as an organization, obviously there are still individuals who are out-and-out asshats or criminals like Santorum and certain priests, respectively.

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: One gigantic problem that we've faced in western civilization for the last 1700 years or so is the fact that the traditional canon of the New Testament has very little to say about managing a nation.

If you actually read the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, yes, there are some nice things attributed to him, no question. However, to focus only on "love your enemies" and "do not repay evil for evil," you're really missing the broader context. Jesus was creating a counter-cultural movement in preparation for the coming of the "Kingdom of Heaven," one which had to survive in the face of persecution by an authoritarian government, but which still had to have something with which to attract new converts. The early Christian formula of reaching out to the common people in love, promising them something beyond this world if they converted gained them many followers, and the stated policy of submitting to governmental authority (when at all possible) earned them a great deal of sympathy, and did (in some cases,) prevent the empire from cracking down on them as hard as they might have otherwise.

Then, a funny thing happened. The Christians won. When Christians got a hold of the reigns of western civilization, all of a sudden there was not a lot of specific instruction to go on - they were stuck making judgments based on large sets of principles, with conclusions that varied tremendously with slight variations in emphasis. Many questions popped up which religious people are still arguing about today. Sure, Jesus said to "turn the other cheek" and "not repay evil for evil," but how can a society survive if it takes that attitude towards crime or defense? If the most important purpose of life on earth is to obtain salvation, then why shouldn't a government want to use its influence to "save" as many people as possible? If, as Augustine claimed, a "heretic is worse than a murderer," why should a government give people freedom to spread ideas that would send people to hell? Should a government obey Christs mandate for Charity, or does that break down any idea of property? Heck, what kind of government is most pleasing to God anyway? The only governing body in the Bible with a divine endorsement is a theocratic synod of judges, and Israel couldn't even make that work back when God supposedly showed up to kill everyone when they did something he didn't like.

If you look at things like this article, and compare it with some of the rhetoric being spouted by evangelical politicians, you'll see we're still having more-or-less the same discussions today.

soup: In before people posting without having read the farking article... oh wait, too slow.

I've read it, and it reiterates what I've been telling the "Christians" in my life.

They ignore me because I'm an atheist, and they think that is the source of my criticism, not that I think they are the very hypocrites that drove me to question what I believed in the first place.

I am also one of those that is doing what he considers the "work of Jesus" in my community, and demanding it from our government; I just do it without demanding people pray before I help them, and I do it humbly, and try not to "toot my own horn" over it.

I get embarrassed when people praise my good works, because damn it, it isn't that extraordinary, I'm just doing what I think is right.

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. It's so very simple a concept to live your life by.

Meepzoid: so the Easter Bunny comes out of his tomb, lays some chocolate eggs, and if he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of Santa Claus.

then we get Jesus McNuggets and wine for Sunday Dinner.

I think that's it---I might have missed something along the way.....

Thread over. Meepzoid is our winner.

stpauler: Revelation 19:11And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

those were written by John the Revelator and aren't attributed to Jesus.

/guess the song in my head now

I'm troubled that public opinion so easily characterizes religion as only right-wing Republican politics.


I've never figured this out. Most everyone I know is a progressive or moderate, and most if not all are regular churchgoers. It's sad that the wacko atheists are grouped under the progressive banner and tar the rest of us who want nothing to do with them. Likewise, it's also unfair when we get grouped with the right-wing radical churchgoers.

Jesus was important for his sympathy with the poor and down trodden and the best symbol of Jesus is probably a poor but honest and humble guy. He should be the one to ask.

Descartes: I'm troubled that public opinion so easily characterizes religion as only right-wing Republican politics.


I've never figured this out. Most everyone I know is a progressive or moderate, and most if not all are regular churchgoers. It's sad that the wacko atheists are grouped under the progressive banner and tar the rest of us who want nothing to do with them. Likewise, it's also unfair when we get grouped with the right-wing radical churchgoers.

It's simple.

The regular churchgoers don't get airtime because they're actually, for the most part, normal, and therefore uninteresting, people. What people end up seeing therefore are the batshiat fundamentalist lunatics that find themselves in the news and the idiot politicians that pander to them.

So we hear a loud and obnoxious group that represents one view point and silence from the other. Unfortunately, this creates a bias that the loud group is the representative majority.

heinekenftw: Descartes: I'm troubled that public opinion so easily characterizes religion as only right-wing Republican politics.


I've never figured this out. Most everyone I know is a progressive or moderate, and most if not all are regular churchgoers. It's sad that the wacko atheists are grouped under the progressive banner and tar the rest of us who want nothing to do with them. Likewise, it's also unfair when we get grouped with the right-wing radical churchgoers.

It's simple.

The regular churchgoers don't get airtime because they're actually, for the most part, normal, and therefore uninteresting, people. What people end up seeing therefore are the batshiat fundamentalist lunatics that find themselves in the news and the idiot politicians that pander to them.

So we hear a loud and obnoxious group that represents one view point and silence from the other. Unfortunately, this creates a bias that the loud group is the representative majority.

I know a few Christians that are afraid to call themselves one, because they don't want to be associated with the loudest and most obnoxious ones.

And it really depends on where you are. If you're in one of the large metro areas in the country, you probably aren't going to run into the fundamentalist crowd too much. Go into rural areas away from the city, and it's a bit different. They may not be the majority, but they certainly have a plurality.

one republican at a time... sweet Jesus.

FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

When doing the stations of the cross, well, it depends on the parish. I don't remember that happening on Palm Sunday. I thought the stations happened on Good Friday.

//STATION!

heinekenftw: Descartes: I'm troubled that public opinion so easily characterizes religion as only right-wing Republican politics.


I've never figured this out. Most everyone I know is a progressive or moderate, and most if not all are regular churchgoers. It's sad that the wacko atheists are grouped under the progressive banner and tar the rest of us who want nothing to do with them. Likewise, it's also unfair when we get grouped with the right-wing radical churchgoers.

It's simple.

The regular churchgoers don't get airtime because they're actually, for the most part, normal, and therefore uninteresting, people. What people end up seeing therefore are the batshiat fundamentalist lunatics that find themselves in the news and the idiot politicians that pander to them.

So we hear a loud and obnoxious group that represents one view point and silence from the other. Unfortunately, this creates a bias that the loud group is the representative majority.

It doesn't help that you don't see much protesting from the so-called "representative majority" who are claimed to not be sympathetic to those ideas. It happens from time to time, and it's genuinely inspiring when it does (and this coming from a very ardent atheist), but very often all you get is either (a) silence or (b) "well those aren't real Christians, so my Christianity shouldn't be lumped in with theirs." TFA is a variation of (b).

Something else to keep in mind, look at the number of people who support various religiously-based and religiously-defended stances on issues such as:
-abortion
-birth control, including condom use
-sex outside of marriage
-sex for fun, even within marriage
-masturbation
-homosexuality
-bisexuality
-sex education in general
-science education, especially evolution
-medical treatment for terminal patients (faith healing, prayer healing, or not going to the doctor because it's god's will, etc.)
-euthanasia
-women in the workplace
-women in the military
-women outside of the kitchen in general
-divorce
-domestic abuse
-interfaith marriage

You have to admit, these are not necessarily fringe beliefs. They may be extremist beliefs, but they are not all held by a strange fringe minority. Some are, but not many. Many of them are in fact held by either a sizable minority or by the majority.

Let's also look at the number of Catholics who genuinely don't seem to give a crap that the Catholic Church defends and hides and lies about child rape by their leadership, going so far as to put a pedophile in charge of their internal investigation, and then cries foul that the Church is the real victim in allegations of child rape because the media is being mean for reporting that priests and cardinals are raping children and the Church had to pay settlement money to the victims. I mean, yes everyone says "It's wrong to rape children" but that doesn't seem to stop the Catholic Church from continuing to rake in billions of dollars annually through tithes and donations. I mean, let's face it, I can *almost* see a legitimate viewpoint for many of the above mentioned topics if I were to assume the validity of Christian dogma (something that I usually can't do sober, for what it's worth), but hindering investigation into child rape allegations of clergy because it's bad press for the Church? How does that act alone not send people away from Catholicism in staggering numbers, and what does it say about the people who aren't willing to leave the Catholic Church over it?

So really what we have is one loud, obnoxious, and vile group of people who claim to represent an entire religious viewpoint (either Catholicism specifically or Christianity as a whole) and tacit acceptance of that group by the silent majority who do not seem at all compelled to speak out loudly to say, "No, you are a deplorable group of extremists and I will not let you pervert our faith just so you can get away with trying to dominate others." Because of that, that loud, obnoxious, and vile group of Christians actually do come to represent the entire religious viewpoint. Just because what Descartes said - "[m]ost everyone I know is a progressive or moderate, and most if not all are regular churchgoers" - probably applies to you too doesn't mean that most everyone who is a Christian or Catholic is actually like that. To suggest that because the infinitesimally small number of regular churchgoers any one of you knows relative to the sheer number of them out there aren't batsh*t crazy doesn't mean your personal experiences aren't anything but statistical outliers. You're lucky that you don't know psychotic fundamentalist nutjobs. Most people, however, aren't as lucky.

meat0918: xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

When doing the stations of the cross, well, it depends on the parish. I don't remember that happening on Palm Sunday. I thought the stations happened on Good Friday.

//STATION!

See, learn something new every day. Good info, thanks.

Station! :

xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

It's a Catholic thing...you wouldn't understand.

dennysgod: xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

It's a Catholic thing...you wouldn't understand.

True statement. I'm a good at "theoretical theology", in that I can easily "get" why people believe things, or believed them 3000 years ago, and passed them on. What I can't get my head around is the rituals. I've been to lots of Catholic functions, Masses, Christmas, Easter, lots of weddings and funerals, baptisms, etc. I've managed to dodge Holy Friday and Palm Sunday, apparently.

I'm pretty sure my wife knows what kind of thing will make me tweak out and try to leave the venue, and does a great job keeping me away from it :-)

It's not that I don't like 'em, and the atmosphere was by no means intentional, but you've never felt like more of an Other than when you're an atheist being married in a Catholic church.

xrayspx: dennysgod: xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

It's a Catholic thing...you wouldn't understand.

True statement. I'm a good at "theoretical theology", in that I can easily "get" why people believe things, or believed them 3000 years ago, and passed them on. What I can't get my head around is the rituals. I've been to lots of Catholic functions, Masses, Christmas, Easter, lots of weddings and funerals, baptisms, etc. I've managed to dodge Holy Friday and Palm Sunday, apparently.

I'm pretty sure my wife knows what kind of thing will make me tweak out and try to leave the venue, and does a great job keeping me away from it :-)

It's not that I don't like 'em, and the atmosphere was by no means intentional, but you've never felt like more of an Other than when you're an atheist being married in a Catholic church.

You don't need to be an atheist to feel like an outsider in a Catholic church. They see themselves as the one True Apostolic Church (unbroken secessions of bishops since Christ passed the baton to his Apostles) and because all other Christian denominations came from them basically anything outside Catholicism is a lesser form of Christianity in their eyes.

Actually I'd wader you'd get less flack being just a plan non-believer then a reformer.

whidbey: I love how the far-right so-called Christians feel the need to skip the part about "Giving Caesar his" when it comes to denouncing taxes.

Seriously, is there any part of the Christian religion that is actually being practiced at all in this country?

that's only like 1 line, not like every line was supposed to be taken as fact right?

Virulency: whidbey: I love how the far-right so-called Christians feel the need to skip the part about "Giving Caesar his" when it comes to denouncing taxes.

Seriously, is there any part of the Christian religion that is actually being practiced at all in this country?

that's only like 1 line, not like every line was supposed to be taken as fact right?

It's a big one.

In fact, there are three tests to being a Christian:

1. Turn the other cheek
2. Love thy enemies
3. Give Caesar his own

Gotta wonder who, if anyone, is doing all three.

Bonus: without whining
Fark: without Bevets

xrayspx: dennysgod: xrayspx: FTFA: In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

Is that really a thing? Like, a common thing, that people do?

/good grief

It's a Catholic thing...you wouldn't understand.

True statement. I'm a good at "theoretical theology", in that I can easily "get" why people believe things, or believed them 3000 years ago, and passed them on. What I can't get my head around is the rituals. I've been to lots of Catholic functions, Masses, Christmas, Easter, lots of weddings and funerals, baptisms, etc. I've managed to dodge Holy Friday and Palm Sunday, apparently.

I'm pretty sure my wife knows what kind of thing will make me tweak out and try to leave the venue, and does a great job keeping me away from it :-)

It's not that I don't like 'em, and the atmosphere was by no means intentional, but you've never felt like more of an Other than when you're an atheist being married in a Catholic church.

The Palm Sunday mass has a reading of the passion, with the congregation reading the parts from the crowd. The thing to remember about Catholic rituals (Or any ritual) is that it's a form of interactive theater. The idea is to get the crowd involved in a way that seems real, so they are more attached to the ideas being presented during the ritual. It's basically a form of viral marketing. That being said, if you go into a ritual understanding what it is, it's much easier to appricaite both the art behind the ritual and the merits of the idea it's supposed to be pushing. Anyways, if you want to really feel like an Other, try performing a Celtic hand fastening ritual for your brother's non-Church wedding to a militant atheist while your devote Catholic parents try not to get up and leave in protest.

/Fun times.
//Holidays are a blast too.

Jim_Callahan: One of the reasons I'm nicer regarding Catholics than most branches of Christianity is that they're capable of having internal arguments without breaking up into more damned factions and each side claiming only theirs is true Christianity. They grew out of excommunicating dissidents after the Galileio thing.

Well, I mean as an organization, obviously there are still individuals who are out-and-out asshats or criminals like Santorum and certain priests, respectively.

The abuse scandals were covered up at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Your argument is invalid.

The Catholic Church is almost as hardline conservative as born again sects. The liberal sects like Methodists are the more sane branches.

The real problem with American politics isn't that there's not enough Jesus. It's the fact that there's not enough Odin.

(ie If you're going to plunder a foreign country for its resources, that's fine, but at least have the balls to admit that's what you're doing.)

xrayspx:
Station! :
[www.xrayspx.com image 348x531]

Why doesn't that thing have a willy?