Shprocket 1's Comments
I forgot to mention:
I see a lot of comments from people who assume that lowering the drinking age will somehow magically result in more people drinking. Are you folks for real? User DOJ wrote a comment recommending that we lower the drinking age a year at a time, "to lessen the shock of three years worth of people diving in at once". This is not a view that is in touch with reality. Do you actually believe that the current law against drinking before you're 21 stops 20-year-olds, 19-year-olds, or 18-year-olds? All it does is keep them out of bars and liquor stores, unless they happen to have a convincing-enough fake ID, or they happen to be frequenting one of the many establishments that are somewhat lax on carding people who aren't obviously too young.
I see a lot of comments from people who assume that lowering the drinking age will somehow magically result in more people drinking. Are you folks for real? User DOJ wrote a comment recommending that we lower the drinking age a year at a time, "to lessen the shock of three years worth of people diving in at once". This is not a view that is in touch with reality. Do you actually believe that the current law against drinking before you're 21 stops 20-year-olds, 19-year-olds, or 18-year-olds? All it does is keep them out of bars and liquor stores, unless they happen to have a convincing-enough fake ID, or they happen to be frequenting one of the many establishments that are somewhat lax on carding people who aren't obviously too young.
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Allen G said:
"Congress should at least remove their blackmail that virtually requires states to have the law at 21 to get their full highway fund money. Letting states decide what they want is the proper federalist answer."
Hear, hear to your "at least".
I see a lot of people giving opinions about what the legal age for drinking should be, but I think legislating a legal age at all is absurd and offensive... much more so when that age is above the age of majority. The government should not be legislating personal morality to adults, nor should the government be co-opting the role that belongs to parents.
By "legislating personal morality" I mean criminalizing victimless actions and writing laws designed to protect adults from themselves. We already have laws against driving while intoxicated, so we don't need laws against getting intoxicated, an act which in and of itself puts nobody at risk but the intoxicated person. ALL recreational drugs should be legal for adults to use as they see fit... prohibition didn't work with alcohol and it doesn't work with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, or any other recreational substance. All the statistics show that the "War on Drugs" that began in the Reagan administration has been a massive and very costly failure, not unlike the failed war on alcohol that we waged from 1920 to 1933.
Some Mrs. Grundy type is bound to reply to this with some outraged comments about how drug addicts steal and rob to get money for drugs, and then go on to claim that decriminalizing drugs would result in a tidal wave of such lawlessness. The fact of the matter, however, is that the price of recreational drugs is artificially high (extremely so) precisely because they are illegal. If the cost of heroin actually reflected the cost of producing it, transporting it, and retailing it, a junkie would be able to get his daily fix for around fifty cents, and thus would have no need to steal or rob in order to satisfy his jones. Remove the laws against sales, possession, and use, and you remove the artificially high cost. Remove the artificially high cost, and you remove the impetus to steal.
Mrs. Grundy will also stridently point out that legalizing all drugs would result in a huge rise in drug use, and in drug overdoses. The opposite is true... remove the taboo factor, and drug use will go down, not up. Supply drug enthusiasts with pharmaceutical quality product that does not vary wildly in strength and purity the way street drugs do, and overdoses (along with other health problems induced by drug use) will plummet.
As for alcohol specifically... personally, I plan on giving my 16-month-old son a small glass of wine or beer with his dinner on a regular basis, starting when he's about ten years old. I want him to have no curiosity on the subject of booze, and I want him to be familiar enough with the effects that he won't overdo it when he's older in some futile search for a good time. Forbidden fruit has a powerful allure, especially for kids.
"Congress should at least remove their blackmail that virtually requires states to have the law at 21 to get their full highway fund money. Letting states decide what they want is the proper federalist answer."
Hear, hear to your "at least".
I see a lot of people giving opinions about what the legal age for drinking should be, but I think legislating a legal age at all is absurd and offensive... much more so when that age is above the age of majority. The government should not be legislating personal morality to adults, nor should the government be co-opting the role that belongs to parents.
By "legislating personal morality" I mean criminalizing victimless actions and writing laws designed to protect adults from themselves. We already have laws against driving while intoxicated, so we don't need laws against getting intoxicated, an act which in and of itself puts nobody at risk but the intoxicated person. ALL recreational drugs should be legal for adults to use as they see fit... prohibition didn't work with alcohol and it doesn't work with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, or any other recreational substance. All the statistics show that the "War on Drugs" that began in the Reagan administration has been a massive and very costly failure, not unlike the failed war on alcohol that we waged from 1920 to 1933.
Some Mrs. Grundy type is bound to reply to this with some outraged comments about how drug addicts steal and rob to get money for drugs, and then go on to claim that decriminalizing drugs would result in a tidal wave of such lawlessness. The fact of the matter, however, is that the price of recreational drugs is artificially high (extremely so) precisely because they are illegal. If the cost of heroin actually reflected the cost of producing it, transporting it, and retailing it, a junkie would be able to get his daily fix for around fifty cents, and thus would have no need to steal or rob in order to satisfy his jones. Remove the laws against sales, possession, and use, and you remove the artificially high cost. Remove the artificially high cost, and you remove the impetus to steal.
Mrs. Grundy will also stridently point out that legalizing all drugs would result in a huge rise in drug use, and in drug overdoses. The opposite is true... remove the taboo factor, and drug use will go down, not up. Supply drug enthusiasts with pharmaceutical quality product that does not vary wildly in strength and purity the way street drugs do, and overdoses (along with other health problems induced by drug use) will plummet.
As for alcohol specifically... personally, I plan on giving my 16-month-old son a small glass of wine or beer with his dinner on a regular basis, starting when he's about ten years old. I want him to have no curiosity on the subject of booze, and I want him to be familiar enough with the effects that he won't overdo it when he's older in some futile search for a good time. Forbidden fruit has a powerful allure, especially for kids.
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Sisyphus: It makes a lovely counterpoint to Christian bigotry, don't you think? Except that there's not enough of the anti-Christian sort.
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Hello JJames,
While I do consider the religious beliefs of ALL Christians (and all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, devotees of Ahura-Mazda, Voodoo practitioners, Cybelians, Druids, Appolonians, etc. etc. ad consummatio) to be entirely irrational, I do reserve the bulk of my mockery and vitriol for those, like Chuichupachichi, who fail so magnificently and so vocally to be even remotely Christ-like.
Forgive me for apparently lumping you all together, but (1) in America at least, the type of Christian that you profess to be is decidedly the exception, while the type of Christian that Chuichupachichi represents is the rule; and (2) as noted above, I do still consider you lamentably irrational if you believe in Jesus as an historical person who came back from the dead and was the actual, non-allegorical product of some mystical tryst between God and Mary.
On the other hand, I do have a certain amount of grudging admiration for anyone who recognizes the need to emulate Christ in order to be a good and proper Christian, no matter how irrational they are otherwise. Never mind that this need should be glaringly obvious to anyone with a clear head who has read the New Testament... there are few enough of you out there that it should be considered some kind of accomplishment. The fact that Christ-like Christians are such a minority suggests to me that there is some kind of direct correlation between the tendency to be religious, and an inability to think clearly and/or rationally.
Mere irrationality I can be good-natured about, but those aggressively bellicose types who seek to codify their irrational beliefs into our lawbooks I regard as dire enemies of humanity who richly deserve to have the embarrassing light of plain fact shone upon them whenever possible, along with heaping helpings of caustic derision.
I will say this about Christianity: If you define Christianity as simply the teachings of Jesus, unsullied and unvarnished by opportunistic interpretations, and without all the value-added nonsense embellishments about the prophecies of the Jews, virgin birth, healing of lepers with a word or a touch, walking on water, turning water into wine, coming back from the dead, etc., it doesn't offend me a bit.
What Jesus said was noble and beautiful, and unlike the things said about Jesus by other people, that nobility and beauty defy even an over-simplified satirical treatment like "HAY GUYZ, LET'S ALL TRY BEING NICE 2 EACH OTHER 4 A CHANGE, EVEN IF PEOPLE AREN'T NICE 2 US BACK, KTHXBAI". I'm a fan of that basic message, and it shocks, disturbs, and angers me no end that the majority of Christians in America today are somehow able to twist it into "God wants us to kill those Satan-worshipping Muslim ragheads, reject science, persecute homosexuals, shred the Constitution, and take over the government".
Unfortunately, nobility and beauty is not enough to make an idea practical. Karl Marx had some pretty noble and beautiful ideas too, and they also defy that satirical boiling-down treatment: "HAY GUYZ, LET'S ALL B EQUALZ & SHARE EVERYTHING, K?". I'd buy Marx a beer and call him a great-hearted giant among men if he wasn't dead, but his ideas still fail miserably when people try to put them into practice. People simply are not as motivated to be virtuous as Marx (and Jesus) apparently gave them credit for being, which is why attempts to put Christianity and Communism into practice inevitably result in atrocious, disastrous failures like the Inquisition or the Soviet Union.
To any Christian to whom my point of view sounds at all reasonable: I'd be more than happy to sit down and have a genuinely friendly meal with you, and even discuss your religious beliefs without any rancor whatsoever... though I wouldn't be able to help but be at least a little bit amused by them. I could never do the same with a 'Christian' like Chuichupachichi, because I'd either lose my appetite completely, or have my entire day ruined by an unfulfilled desire to stick my salad fork in his eye.
While I do consider the religious beliefs of ALL Christians (and all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, devotees of Ahura-Mazda, Voodoo practitioners, Cybelians, Druids, Appolonians, etc. etc. ad consummatio) to be entirely irrational, I do reserve the bulk of my mockery and vitriol for those, like Chuichupachichi, who fail so magnificently and so vocally to be even remotely Christ-like.
Forgive me for apparently lumping you all together, but (1) in America at least, the type of Christian that you profess to be is decidedly the exception, while the type of Christian that Chuichupachichi represents is the rule; and (2) as noted above, I do still consider you lamentably irrational if you believe in Jesus as an historical person who came back from the dead and was the actual, non-allegorical product of some mystical tryst between God and Mary.
On the other hand, I do have a certain amount of grudging admiration for anyone who recognizes the need to emulate Christ in order to be a good and proper Christian, no matter how irrational they are otherwise. Never mind that this need should be glaringly obvious to anyone with a clear head who has read the New Testament... there are few enough of you out there that it should be considered some kind of accomplishment. The fact that Christ-like Christians are such a minority suggests to me that there is some kind of direct correlation between the tendency to be religious, and an inability to think clearly and/or rationally.
Mere irrationality I can be good-natured about, but those aggressively bellicose types who seek to codify their irrational beliefs into our lawbooks I regard as dire enemies of humanity who richly deserve to have the embarrassing light of plain fact shone upon them whenever possible, along with heaping helpings of caustic derision.
I will say this about Christianity: If you define Christianity as simply the teachings of Jesus, unsullied and unvarnished by opportunistic interpretations, and without all the value-added nonsense embellishments about the prophecies of the Jews, virgin birth, healing of lepers with a word or a touch, walking on water, turning water into wine, coming back from the dead, etc., it doesn't offend me a bit.
What Jesus said was noble and beautiful, and unlike the things said about Jesus by other people, that nobility and beauty defy even an over-simplified satirical treatment like "HAY GUYZ, LET'S ALL TRY BEING NICE 2 EACH OTHER 4 A CHANGE, EVEN IF PEOPLE AREN'T NICE 2 US BACK, KTHXBAI". I'm a fan of that basic message, and it shocks, disturbs, and angers me no end that the majority of Christians in America today are somehow able to twist it into "God wants us to kill those Satan-worshipping Muslim ragheads, reject science, persecute homosexuals, shred the Constitution, and take over the government".
Unfortunately, nobility and beauty is not enough to make an idea practical. Karl Marx had some pretty noble and beautiful ideas too, and they also defy that satirical boiling-down treatment: "HAY GUYZ, LET'S ALL B EQUALZ & SHARE EVERYTHING, K?". I'd buy Marx a beer and call him a great-hearted giant among men if he wasn't dead, but his ideas still fail miserably when people try to put them into practice. People simply are not as motivated to be virtuous as Marx (and Jesus) apparently gave them credit for being, which is why attempts to put Christianity and Communism into practice inevitably result in atrocious, disastrous failures like the Inquisition or the Soviet Union.
To any Christian to whom my point of view sounds at all reasonable: I'd be more than happy to sit down and have a genuinely friendly meal with you, and even discuss your religious beliefs without any rancor whatsoever... though I wouldn't be able to help but be at least a little bit amused by them. I could never do the same with a 'Christian' like Chuichupachichi, because I'd either lose my appetite completely, or have my entire day ruined by an unfulfilled desire to stick my salad fork in his eye.
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Chuichupachichi:
Those are some severely specious statements you've made about Christianity vs. Paganism.
You said:
"It has become quite a popular, spreading belief that Judaism & Christianity is simply an adaptation or a reinterpretation of previous pagan religeons."
First of all, this is not anything recent. It goes back to the very beginnings of your silly delusional religion. Second, what does 'popularity' have to do with it? Are you trying to imply that because many people agree that Christianity blatantly appropriated many elements from older religions, that the assertion is false? Your grasp of logic is as poor as your grasp of reality, Mr. Believes-in-a-Giant-Magic-Superhero-Who-Lives-in-the-Sky.
You said:
"Propagating this view is intended to refute or discredit the validity of Judeo/Christianity’s teaching of that its source is the only true god and that he is someone other than the false gods of Paganism."
No. Propagating this view is intended to propagate sane, reasonable, rational, historical truth, unlike anything in the Bible or the withered heads of religious zealots like you. It's got nothing to do with promoting some set of irrational beliefs (i.e., religion) alternative to your own. Rational people aren't religious, and rational educated people laugh at the idea that your Bible is an historical document.
You said:
"The intention to disprove that is obvious from the implication of that Jud/Chr. is no different than the previous pagan religeons since it is merely a recycling of them. If this were true, and if at their core, they were really just the same thing. Then why would they have always produced different cultures/lifestyles/values that have always been at odds with eachother?"
First of all, it's spelled R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N. I didn't point that out the first time because I figured it was a typo, but you seem consistent about spelling the word with too many 'e's and not enough 'i's. I hate to make a spelling flame out of this, but seriously: if you can't even SPELL 'religion', then how on Earth could anyone take you for a serious enough scholar of religion to know diddly-squat about it?
Second, your argument here is very typical of the "oversimplify, misinterpret, then leap to a conclusion that does not follow" style of debate that is so frequently employed by clench-fisted, belligerent 'religeous' zealots like yourself. Christianity and Paganism have not "always been at odds with each other". Christianity became intolerant of Paganism, but the so-called Pagan religions have often been noted for their tolerance of other belief systems. In Pantheistic Rome, the common wisdom was that worshippers of different gods were basically doing the same thing, only putting a different face on it. Christians, by contrast, from the very beginning took the attitude (inherited from the Jews, from whom you cribbed and stole even before appropriating all those pagan traditions) that theirs was the ONE, TRUE GOD, and that all other gods were false. I see that you yourself are particularly strident about this point, as you go out of your way to characterize pagan deities as "false gods".
Don't even start with any nonsense about Christians being persecuted by the Romans. That was not a matter of Paganism being intolerant of Christianity, it was a matter of a profoundly martial society being intolerant of people who believed that killing was a sin, because such people make very poor soldiers.
You said:
"There is obviously a huge fundamental difference between them. Differences which are so different, that they are in fact, opposites. There are reasons why those similarities/mirrorings between Jud/Chr. and earlier Pagan religeons exist. Reasons of which their explaination would be to long for this already long post. Though I’d explain if requested."
The "huge fundamental difference" was not always there, and the two are not opposites. Early Christianity, particularly the flavor promoted by Paul/Saul of Tarsus, was deeply Gnostic, just like paganism. In other words, Christ was viewed as an allegory, not a real person, and the path to becoming a true Christian was an inner voyage in which symbolic figures (like Jesus) and events (like the Resurrection) were used as waypoints to finding the Christ within yourself, and actualizing it in your external life. Saul/Paul's Gnostic form of Christianity was suppressed by what became the Catholic church because Gnosticism is not compatible with the idea that you need a lot of clergy and bishops and a Pope to communicate with God for you and tell you what to do. There was a lot of money and power at stake, Paul's Gnosticism got in the way of the church getting at that money and power, and no further explanation is necessary to anyone who isn't so delusional as to believe in bearded robed giants who lounge around on clouds and watch with disapproval when humans masturbate. Suffice it to say that although Paul was extremely important to early Christianity and did more to spread the faith than anyone who came before him, his writings were shrewdly left out when the canonical New Testament was forged out of an incoherent pile of zany, foamy-mouthed ramblings about a parthenogenetic Jewish zombie whose vampiric God needed blood for some reason (yet couldn't just magic up an ocean of it to swim in to fill that need).
I laugh at your assertion that your post was too long to continue, as it was much shorter than other posts you've made in which you pitched hissy fits, blatantly flamed other people, and revealed your intolerance and homophobia (incidentally, did you know that a recent university study reveals that, as long suspected, homophobes find homosexuals repellent because they are themselves repressed homosexuals? Come out of the closet, Mary, and be the butterfly you are for once).
Those are some severely specious statements you've made about Christianity vs. Paganism.
You said:
"It has become quite a popular, spreading belief that Judaism & Christianity is simply an adaptation or a reinterpretation of previous pagan religeons."
First of all, this is not anything recent. It goes back to the very beginnings of your silly delusional religion. Second, what does 'popularity' have to do with it? Are you trying to imply that because many people agree that Christianity blatantly appropriated many elements from older religions, that the assertion is false? Your grasp of logic is as poor as your grasp of reality, Mr. Believes-in-a-Giant-Magic-Superhero-Who-Lives-in-the-Sky.
You said:
"Propagating this view is intended to refute or discredit the validity of Judeo/Christianity’s teaching of that its source is the only true god and that he is someone other than the false gods of Paganism."
No. Propagating this view is intended to propagate sane, reasonable, rational, historical truth, unlike anything in the Bible or the withered heads of religious zealots like you. It's got nothing to do with promoting some set of irrational beliefs (i.e., religion) alternative to your own. Rational people aren't religious, and rational educated people laugh at the idea that your Bible is an historical document.
You said:
"The intention to disprove that is obvious from the implication of that Jud/Chr. is no different than the previous pagan religeons since it is merely a recycling of them. If this were true, and if at their core, they were really just the same thing. Then why would they have always produced different cultures/lifestyles/values that have always been at odds with eachother?"
First of all, it's spelled R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N. I didn't point that out the first time because I figured it was a typo, but you seem consistent about spelling the word with too many 'e's and not enough 'i's. I hate to make a spelling flame out of this, but seriously: if you can't even SPELL 'religion', then how on Earth could anyone take you for a serious enough scholar of religion to know diddly-squat about it?
Second, your argument here is very typical of the "oversimplify, misinterpret, then leap to a conclusion that does not follow" style of debate that is so frequently employed by clench-fisted, belligerent 'religeous' zealots like yourself. Christianity and Paganism have not "always been at odds with each other". Christianity became intolerant of Paganism, but the so-called Pagan religions have often been noted for their tolerance of other belief systems. In Pantheistic Rome, the common wisdom was that worshippers of different gods were basically doing the same thing, only putting a different face on it. Christians, by contrast, from the very beginning took the attitude (inherited from the Jews, from whom you cribbed and stole even before appropriating all those pagan traditions) that theirs was the ONE, TRUE GOD, and that all other gods were false. I see that you yourself are particularly strident about this point, as you go out of your way to characterize pagan deities as "false gods".
Don't even start with any nonsense about Christians being persecuted by the Romans. That was not a matter of Paganism being intolerant of Christianity, it was a matter of a profoundly martial society being intolerant of people who believed that killing was a sin, because such people make very poor soldiers.
You said:
"There is obviously a huge fundamental difference between them. Differences which are so different, that they are in fact, opposites. There are reasons why those similarities/mirrorings between Jud/Chr. and earlier Pagan religeons exist. Reasons of which their explaination would be to long for this already long post. Though I’d explain if requested."
The "huge fundamental difference" was not always there, and the two are not opposites. Early Christianity, particularly the flavor promoted by Paul/Saul of Tarsus, was deeply Gnostic, just like paganism. In other words, Christ was viewed as an allegory, not a real person, and the path to becoming a true Christian was an inner voyage in which symbolic figures (like Jesus) and events (like the Resurrection) were used as waypoints to finding the Christ within yourself, and actualizing it in your external life. Saul/Paul's Gnostic form of Christianity was suppressed by what became the Catholic church because Gnosticism is not compatible with the idea that you need a lot of clergy and bishops and a Pope to communicate with God for you and tell you what to do. There was a lot of money and power at stake, Paul's Gnosticism got in the way of the church getting at that money and power, and no further explanation is necessary to anyone who isn't so delusional as to believe in bearded robed giants who lounge around on clouds and watch with disapproval when humans masturbate. Suffice it to say that although Paul was extremely important to early Christianity and did more to spread the faith than anyone who came before him, his writings were shrewdly left out when the canonical New Testament was forged out of an incoherent pile of zany, foamy-mouthed ramblings about a parthenogenetic Jewish zombie whose vampiric God needed blood for some reason (yet couldn't just magic up an ocean of it to swim in to fill that need).
I laugh at your assertion that your post was too long to continue, as it was much shorter than other posts you've made in which you pitched hissy fits, blatantly flamed other people, and revealed your intolerance and homophobia (incidentally, did you know that a recent university study reveals that, as long suspected, homophobes find homosexuals repellent because they are themselves repressed homosexuals? Come out of the closet, Mary, and be the butterfly you are for once).
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This is in reply to what "Ted (the other one)" wrote about Christianity borrowing Easter and Christmas from so-called 'pagan' religions:
It goes a LOT deeper than that. Osiris, Mithra, and Dionysus (all of whom were worshipped before Jesus was even born, and even before the Jews invented Jehovah) all had the following VERY INTERESTING things said about them:
* Was the son of a God
* Was born of a virgin
* Performed the miracle -- at a wedding, no less -- of turning water into wine
* Was tortured and violently killed, becoming a martyr
* Rose from the dead after being killed
* Was taken bodily into Paradise while still alive (after being resurrected)
* Sits in judgment of the dead
* Is the savior of Mankind
A lot of the symbols and traditions used by Christians are also cribbed from earlier 'pagan' religions that were suppressed in the rise of Christianity, including the symbolic cannibalism of Communion. It's not uncommon for archaeologists to have difficulty initially telling the difference between newly-rediscovered 'pagan' temples and early Christian temples. Dionysus was sometimes depicted nailed to a crucifix (although his story, which does vary, doesn't usually say he was killed that way)... in exactly the same pose that is typically used to depict Jesus, with the head bowed, knees together, legs turned to one side. Ancient icons depicting Dionysus crucified can easily be mistaken for Christian icons depicting Jesus, until you decipher what's written on them.
For example after example after example of earlier practices and traditions that were incorporated into Christianity and suppressed in their 'pagan' form, read Sir James Frazer's book THE GOLDEN BOUGH, which once upon a time was required reading for any university-educated person. It will give you a clear idea of how, in Europe, ideas about sympathetic magic became religious practices that were later incorporated into Christianity. The idea of a mock-king whose blood must be spilled at the Solstice in order to bring the resurrection of Spring every year is very, very old, and the idea that this mock-king would be brought back to life in the person of next year's sacrifice was quite commonplace.
If you ask me, religion in general is a disgusting sham that all too often closes and enslaves human minds (and sometimes bodies!). That includes the so-called 'pagan' faiths of old along with Wicca, faux-modern Druidism, Madonna Kabala Mahoney Malarkey, $cientology, the corruption of the Buddha's words that Buddhism has become, and every other bogus attempt to explain the world and tap into the mystic. However, unlike the Christians we know and loathe today, the ancient 'pagans' tended to be Gnostic in their worship, regarding it as a highly personal INTERNAL voyage that did not necessarily require priests or their bogus authority (except as guides to put one's foot on the path). These people were not prone to condemning others for holding differing beliefs, since Gnostic 'pagan' beliefs were mostly consciously allegorical anyway.
Saul of Tarsus, after converting rather suddenly to Christianity on the road to Damascus and changing his name to Paul, wrote extensively of Christianity as another approach to the Gnostic internal voyage... he also spoke of Jesus not as a real, actual person, but as an allegorical figure. In the rise of Mother Church and its greed for gold and power, Paul's gospel was conveniently left out of what became the Christian Bible.
It's also interesting to note that none of the Gospel authors included in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) ever met or even saw Jesus. The earliest of them didn't write his gospel until AD 70, when Jesus had allegedly been dead for 37 years (I say 'allegedly' because there isn't any reliable evidence to prove that Jesus ever really lived in the first place, except as a Gnostic allegory). Three of the four had read and were heavily influenced by the Gospel(s) written by their predecessors, and their versions of Jesus' life had some rather glaring differences. In the 5th Century Tatian wrote his 'Diatessaron' in an attempt to fuse the four Gospels into one; this became the standard Christian text used in Syria during the 3rd and 4th Centuries. The Diatessaron was eventually replaced with four separate Gospels again, but it does show that there was a conscious effort to make the four Gospels agree more closely, an effort that did not cease when the Diatessaron fell out of fashion.
Christians, go and be superstitious all you like; comfort yourself with the delusion that you don't REALLY have to die if that's what you have to do to cope; spend your free time sending telepathic fan mail to your imaginary zombie superhero praising Him and pledging to be his servant in return for His having mercy on you for being born sinful as a result of a woman made of a spare rib from a man molded out of clay getting conned into eating a magic apple by a magic talking snake; whatever. Just stop getting it all over the rest of us, you insufferable bunch of nosy, prejudiced, narrow-minded, oppressive, hateful, judgmental, un-Christlike tools.
It goes a LOT deeper than that. Osiris, Mithra, and Dionysus (all of whom were worshipped before Jesus was even born, and even before the Jews invented Jehovah) all had the following VERY INTERESTING things said about them:
* Was the son of a God
* Was born of a virgin
* Performed the miracle -- at a wedding, no less -- of turning water into wine
* Was tortured and violently killed, becoming a martyr
* Rose from the dead after being killed
* Was taken bodily into Paradise while still alive (after being resurrected)
* Sits in judgment of the dead
* Is the savior of Mankind
A lot of the symbols and traditions used by Christians are also cribbed from earlier 'pagan' religions that were suppressed in the rise of Christianity, including the symbolic cannibalism of Communion. It's not uncommon for archaeologists to have difficulty initially telling the difference between newly-rediscovered 'pagan' temples and early Christian temples. Dionysus was sometimes depicted nailed to a crucifix (although his story, which does vary, doesn't usually say he was killed that way)... in exactly the same pose that is typically used to depict Jesus, with the head bowed, knees together, legs turned to one side. Ancient icons depicting Dionysus crucified can easily be mistaken for Christian icons depicting Jesus, until you decipher what's written on them.
For example after example after example of earlier practices and traditions that were incorporated into Christianity and suppressed in their 'pagan' form, read Sir James Frazer's book THE GOLDEN BOUGH, which once upon a time was required reading for any university-educated person. It will give you a clear idea of how, in Europe, ideas about sympathetic magic became religious practices that were later incorporated into Christianity. The idea of a mock-king whose blood must be spilled at the Solstice in order to bring the resurrection of Spring every year is very, very old, and the idea that this mock-king would be brought back to life in the person of next year's sacrifice was quite commonplace.
If you ask me, religion in general is a disgusting sham that all too often closes and enslaves human minds (and sometimes bodies!). That includes the so-called 'pagan' faiths of old along with Wicca, faux-modern Druidism, Madonna Kabala Mahoney Malarkey, $cientology, the corruption of the Buddha's words that Buddhism has become, and every other bogus attempt to explain the world and tap into the mystic. However, unlike the Christians we know and loathe today, the ancient 'pagans' tended to be Gnostic in their worship, regarding it as a highly personal INTERNAL voyage that did not necessarily require priests or their bogus authority (except as guides to put one's foot on the path). These people were not prone to condemning others for holding differing beliefs, since Gnostic 'pagan' beliefs were mostly consciously allegorical anyway.
Saul of Tarsus, after converting rather suddenly to Christianity on the road to Damascus and changing his name to Paul, wrote extensively of Christianity as another approach to the Gnostic internal voyage... he also spoke of Jesus not as a real, actual person, but as an allegorical figure. In the rise of Mother Church and its greed for gold and power, Paul's gospel was conveniently left out of what became the Christian Bible.
It's also interesting to note that none of the Gospel authors included in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) ever met or even saw Jesus. The earliest of them didn't write his gospel until AD 70, when Jesus had allegedly been dead for 37 years (I say 'allegedly' because there isn't any reliable evidence to prove that Jesus ever really lived in the first place, except as a Gnostic allegory). Three of the four had read and were heavily influenced by the Gospel(s) written by their predecessors, and their versions of Jesus' life had some rather glaring differences. In the 5th Century Tatian wrote his 'Diatessaron' in an attempt to fuse the four Gospels into one; this became the standard Christian text used in Syria during the 3rd and 4th Centuries. The Diatessaron was eventually replaced with four separate Gospels again, but it does show that there was a conscious effort to make the four Gospels agree more closely, an effort that did not cease when the Diatessaron fell out of fashion.
Christians, go and be superstitious all you like; comfort yourself with the delusion that you don't REALLY have to die if that's what you have to do to cope; spend your free time sending telepathic fan mail to your imaginary zombie superhero praising Him and pledging to be his servant in return for His having mercy on you for being born sinful as a result of a woman made of a spare rib from a man molded out of clay getting conned into eating a magic apple by a magic talking snake; whatever. Just stop getting it all over the rest of us, you insufferable bunch of nosy, prejudiced, narrow-minded, oppressive, hateful, judgmental, un-Christlike tools.
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I guess the trickle of totally inane ad hominem comments with no point to them is just going to continue until this thread drops off the radar altogether. Personally, I'm sick of it.
"HUR HUR HUR, HE AM A NUMNUT!" <--Oh yeah, there's a cogent argument that didn't come from a damaged, substandard brain.
"HUR HUR HUR, HE AM A NUMNUT!" <--Oh yeah, there's a cogent argument that didn't come from a damaged, substandard brain.
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Celeste, I really don't think it's that simple.
The 911 call is pretty confusing. The media, along with people who like to make snap judgments using insufficient data, emphasize the bits that make him sound like a cold-blooded premeditated killer, and de-emphasize the things he said that seem to contradict that.
I really don't know what this man's intentions were... maybe he was deliberately trying to mislead the 911 operator so as to provide himself with some kind of phony justification to kill two people with no consequences. It's just as possible that he felt a responsibility to go out there, not a desire. If so, he put himself at risk in order to fulfill his perceived obligation to his neighbors, and he doesn't deserve to be treated as if he charged out there in a frenzy of bloodlust. Note that he did shout a warning telling the burglars not to move before opening fire... and as someone else pointed out earlier, when you're pointing a gun at someone and they aren't obeying you, that's reasonable cause for serious alarm.
As for shooting to disable, I quite agree with you in principle, assuming they were really running away from him. Based on the police statements, I'm not so sure they were. Also, it's not such an easy thing to do with a shotgun.
I think you already know what I think of the 911 operator's admonitions for him to stay in the house, and I think I agree with Horn himself on that one: The 911 operator doesn't have any authority to give such an order, and Horn had no obligation to obey.
The 911 call is pretty confusing. The media, along with people who like to make snap judgments using insufficient data, emphasize the bits that make him sound like a cold-blooded premeditated killer, and de-emphasize the things he said that seem to contradict that.
I really don't know what this man's intentions were... maybe he was deliberately trying to mislead the 911 operator so as to provide himself with some kind of phony justification to kill two people with no consequences. It's just as possible that he felt a responsibility to go out there, not a desire. If so, he put himself at risk in order to fulfill his perceived obligation to his neighbors, and he doesn't deserve to be treated as if he charged out there in a frenzy of bloodlust. Note that he did shout a warning telling the burglars not to move before opening fire... and as someone else pointed out earlier, when you're pointing a gun at someone and they aren't obeying you, that's reasonable cause for serious alarm.
As for shooting to disable, I quite agree with you in principle, assuming they were really running away from him. Based on the police statements, I'm not so sure they were. Also, it's not such an easy thing to do with a shotgun.
I think you already know what I think of the 911 operator's admonitions for him to stay in the house, and I think I agree with Horn himself on that one: The 911 operator doesn't have any authority to give such an order, and Horn had no obligation to obey.
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He shouldn't have been where in the first place? In his own yard?
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Has anyone noticed the comments of the police officer who told the news that Joe Horn shot the two Colombian burglars in the back? He qualified it by saying that they weren't hit at the same angle, but both were hit in the back.
If the gunshots were at an angle, then the two men were very likely not running away from Joe when he fired. We heard him yell a warning to them before he opened fire, and we know he used a shotgun, so they had to have been close to him and they must have known he was there.
It is possible to sidle or even back towards someone. It's also very possible to reflexively turn away from someone you are running directly at when it looks like gunfire in your direction is imminent. The burglars could have been attempting to get close enough to take the gun away and use it on Horn when he shot them.
I'm not saying this is what happened, I just want to cast some reasonable doubt on the minds of those of you who are so flat-out sure about what did happen that you're ready to condemn Joe Horn as a murderer even after a grand jury acquitted him.
If the gunshots were at an angle, then the two men were very likely not running away from Joe when he fired. We heard him yell a warning to them before he opened fire, and we know he used a shotgun, so they had to have been close to him and they must have known he was there.
It is possible to sidle or even back towards someone. It's also very possible to reflexively turn away from someone you are running directly at when it looks like gunfire in your direction is imminent. The burglars could have been attempting to get close enough to take the gun away and use it on Horn when he shot them.
I'm not saying this is what happened, I just want to cast some reasonable doubt on the minds of those of you who are so flat-out sure about what did happen that you're ready to condemn Joe Horn as a murderer even after a grand jury acquitted him.
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No hard feelings here either, Ted... but I wasn't talking about ALL your posts, just that one. And no, I'm not trolling. I feel strongly about truth, and just as strongly about the idea that you don't get truth from reading a brief synopsis of something that happened elsewhere between people you don't know. I'm kind of tired of seeing people jump to whatever lurid conclusions please them when they read about something like this. I'd like to encourage the open-minded to realize that forming such strong opinions about people like Joe Horn based solely on what can be gleaned from the Intarwebz is not only unfair and foolish, it's also counter to the very principles ("innocent until proven guilty") that our legal system and our society are based on.
I pointed out myself that I was making some assumptions about what I heard on the tape. Meanwhile, sound bites on the news make many more (and much wilder) assumptions without mentioning that assumptions are what they are. This is the nature of TV journalism: if it bleeds, it leads. News outlets aren't interested in truth, they're interested in ratings and market share.
I pointed out myself that I was making some assumptions about what I heard on the tape. Meanwhile, sound bites on the news make many more (and much wilder) assumptions without mentioning that assumptions are what they are. This is the nature of TV journalism: if it bleeds, it leads. News outlets aren't interested in truth, they're interested in ratings and market share.
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Violet, anyone who breaks into a stranger's home knows that someone might be inside, and that the encounter could lead to violence. By the very fact that they broke into a house, we have to assume that they are prepared to hurt or kill anyone who happens to be there. Burglary is not to be equated with stealing bread from the supermarket. The only question is: how far do our rights go in defending our (and each other's) homes?
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Terry:
Try telling a judge and jury that you're good at reading faces, and see how far you get with that as evidence of anything.
Maybe Joe Horn was good at reading faces too. Maybe what he saw was a couple of dangerous career criminals who were a threat to him and his neighbors, and who needed killing in his estimation. If you can judge people by their faces, shouldn't he be able to as well? You saw a "psycho-christian-redneck" when you looked at Horn's photograph... maybe he saw psycho killer Colombians.
I'm being facetious, of course. I don't care how good you think you are at reading faces, it's no proper basis for judging a person.
Try telling a judge and jury that you're good at reading faces, and see how far you get with that as evidence of anything.
Maybe Joe Horn was good at reading faces too. Maybe what he saw was a couple of dangerous career criminals who were a threat to him and his neighbors, and who needed killing in his estimation. If you can judge people by their faces, shouldn't he be able to as well? You saw a "psycho-christian-redneck" when you looked at Horn's photograph... maybe he saw psycho killer Colombians.
I'm being facetious, of course. I don't care how good you think you are at reading faces, it's no proper basis for judging a person.
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Hi Terry,
Sorry if I made some assumptions about you that were off... we don't see many Yanamamo, Australian aborigines, or New Guinean hobbit-people on the Internet, so I naturally assumed you were part of a culture much younger than 60,000 years.
Unfortunately, whatever cultural mores regarding property your 60,000-year-old tribe subscribes to, they're apparently not workable in even a newly industrialized civilization like China.
I still stand by what I said about your comments being bigoted. The way the man's face looks to you has nothing to do with anything.
Sorry if I made some assumptions about you that were off... we don't see many Yanamamo, Australian aborigines, or New Guinean hobbit-people on the Internet, so I naturally assumed you were part of a culture much younger than 60,000 years.
Unfortunately, whatever cultural mores regarding property your 60,000-year-old tribe subscribes to, they're apparently not workable in even a newly industrialized civilization like China.
I still stand by what I said about your comments being bigoted. The way the man's face looks to you has nothing to do with anything.
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"Hey, let’s legalize murder and rape while we’re at it since 'some people do it anyways.'
What a stupid reason."
What a stupid comment. Murder and rape are crimes against others; putting a forbidden substance into your body hurts nobody but you. You don't see the difference?
Sigh wrote:
"How about instead we raise our children better and teach them virtue?"
Right, how about WE do that and not the legislative branch of the government? While we're teaching them 'virtue' (whatever you happen to mean by that), maybe we could also give them enough factual information about drugs and alcohol that they won't be tantalized by the prospect of trying to find a good time in a forbidden bottle... as opposed to the lies and distortions that we currently expect kids to believe, or the total information blackout on the subject that many parents hand them.
First they told me about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Jesus, and the Boogy Man... then they told me that I'd ruin my life if I smoked pot.