You have not made an argument. Use links to support your argument, not make it for you. You have a history of misunderstanding your own references.
Religious Nonsense
- Thread starter StrangerInAStrangeLand
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I'm not sure how one could read the article and still maintain a rosy view of the current or recent state of military affairs on the strength of one's own "back yard" not being a warzone.
....or, as said previously ...
I thought it was pretty obvious - noting that there are no minefields or unexploded ordinance growing amongst one's petunias in no way says anything about those who do, and it also says nothing about the unprecedented hypervigiliance of the world's standing armies and their arsenals on the beck and call of nervous politicians poised to coat the planet in expensive dog poo.
Are you under the impression that there were no wars in the past?
Not of the current callibre, no.
I think Einstein said it nicely when he mentioned WW4 being fought with sticks and stones.
Your claim was that secular thinking has not made the world a better place but you have done nothing to back it up.
You claim that wars are "worse" today? How so?
Do you want to go back to the Bubonic Plague? Life expectancy of 35 years? Did prayer make them better?
The claim was that it has not ushered in an era of peace, so it's poor form to allude to pre-secular era's as inherently warlike. If anything, we have seen the persistence of conflict despite religion, not because of it.
With the unprecedented standing armies and weapons, the stakes and fallout are higher. The next world war could quite literally send us 10 000 years back in time culturally, technologically, etc.
Given the current state of the military machine and current consumerist lifestyle habits, it could very easily be a case of not choosing, but being forced back to that and even more.
By all accounts, we haven't properly worked out how to live politically or sustainably in an industrial civilization.
How are the conflicts in the Middle East and Africa "despite religion"?
So you're contradicting yourself? Modern war could send us back to the bad old days before secularism?
Perhaps in some rare cases as the exception, and definitely not the rule.
They view the human form as unique in the sense that it offers the opportunity for attaining full enlightenment.
Huh?
If you are trying to define them because of religion, you have to actively forgo probably at least the last 1000 years of history to arrive at a time and place when foreign powers were not taking a dump there ... and it's precisely what the said foreign powers are likely to kick off if they are prevented from continuing to take a dumb there that establishes the concern.
It's more that secularism is at the helm of politics and economics that seem hell bent to send us to the scenario of having fist fights over who gets to eat the cockroaches.
Emblazoning it as heralding the aquarius age does not seem to be an activity of someone with a sober mind (if advocates for the aquarius age had any advocates that were sober at all).
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
You detect the reality.
Religion is for the masses.
It is what those in power use to maintain their power perhaps.
I doubt few in power are theist but they are happy to pretend they share the belief of the group they suggest they represent.
All I hope is there are plenty of cockroaches to eat.
They apparently are high in protein as are maggots so things could be worse.
Alex
I don't think the malevolence arises from mere control of the masses (religious or otherwise). People require leadership. Even if only bad, or imperfect leadership is available, in many cases, that is preferable to what would otherwise ensue.
I guess the problem with bad leadership is when it is self perpetuating.
Anyway, for those wishing to acclimatize to the New World Order, an exciting new dietary supplement is available.
Hint: Ricky Ponting probably doesn't endorse it.
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
I don't think the malevolence arises from mere control of the masses (religious or otherwise). People require leadership. Even if only bad, or imperfect leadership is available, in many cases, that is preferable to what would otherwise ensue.
I guess the problem with bad leadership is when it is self perpetuating.
Anyway, for those wishing to acclimatize to the New World Order, an exciting new dietary supplement is available.
Hint: Ricky Ponting probably doesn't endorse it.
Ricky is a dicky... his ability was to keep playing games when the other kids had grown up and so his talent to play games somehow stood out and rewared to do something the other kids left behind in their childhood.
Paid well to play games and move his mouth so the crowd know they should buy the product he holds up cause well he must be someone they can trust cause he was on tv.
Saves a lot of thinking which is appealing to the mob.
Most people indeed require leadership and even sheep require a leader.
But the lead sheep, as are most leaders, only go where they are directed by someone that the sheep do not see or even know exists.
Their contact is with the dog.
They respect the dog that snaps at their bums as if it is the dog who holds power over them.
What do the sheep know other than they are sheep and that they follow the other sheeps☺ in front, do they know do they care? No they dont think or care and therefore similar to most humans.
Do they have any idea or understand their roll? No not at all ... each of them just want to be a good sheep and to be with the other sheep and hope their bum is not the one that gets bitten by the dog.
Alex
I don't think it's a case of most people require leadership, but practically all people. Leadership means protection, and protection comes at the cost of some personal freedom. So for instance, the trade off you get for sacrificing your freedom at traffic lights (being obedient to a light colour) is the price you have to pay for increased safety .... and like any payment for goods received, there is always some tension in closing the deal. Arguments and appraisals about what leaderships are trading and what are the latest returns seem inevitable and indeed welcome.
But if one is alluding to being "beyond leadership", as the condition befallen the unwashed masses, it strikes me as a sort of enthusiasm that is too cavalier for its own good.
Are you suggesting that conflicts in the Middle East are not caused by religion?
For instance, this cartoon is problematic for its utter stupidity; religious nonsense, indeed. I am, however, curious: Your link shows you searched for the artist and cartoon in particular, and I wonder where ever did you pick it up originally. I mean, it's a terrible juxtaposition, and yet another example of the problems we encounter when we let people we already believe—or in some cases know—are wrong define or set the terms of anything.
The artist, Kevin Frank, is regarded or pitched as some sort of pioneer for Christians in comics, and he has a silly line about really, really wanting to please God, but, you know, abba, agape, whatever, it makes for a cute something or other in some marketplace somewhere. But that also describes a functional aspect of the problem; this either required some effort or didn't. That is, he either had to calculate and construct the sleight, or actually reads the Bible with such wide-eyed naïveté as to actually believe and blithely promote such decontextualized and misinforming scraps.
As to your purpose in seeking it out to pass along, two cents isn't so great a toll: What are you actually trying to tell us?
I'm fascinated; that's a pretty f'd up cartoon.
If set next to the willingness of the fundies to vote for Trump, the more religious Dems to run Clinton for the presidency and back Blue Dogs for office everywhere, and so forth,
it kinda stops being stupid.
So, you're telling us—
• "the intent was to explicitly show the primitive Bronze and Iron Age Christian bible to blatantly contradict itself"
• "The cartoon in this sense, is pretty fu*ked up when one has swallowed the Cool Aid of Christianity, and now has to find their apologetic books to try in vain to spin doctor the two contradicting passages away"
• "The cartoon in this sense, is pretty fu*ked up when one has swallowed the Cool Aid of Christianity, and now has to find their apologetic books to try in vain to spin doctor the two contradicting passages away"
—a Christian just did that ... to Christianity ... because ... why?
• • •
When I arrive at what you just said, I have a particular feeling we're treating the word "stupid" differently. For my part, stupid is as stupid does, and that speaks nothing of the danger. Dangerously stupid, as such, is still stupid.
The really sparkly thing here is the coincidence of advocates compared to ostensible purpose. Meanwhile, if the cartoonist is an example of the problem about the fundies who vote for Trump, and such realities that history required Blue Dogs at all, well, that is what it is, but compared to the marketplace?
I mean, come on, setting aside partisan political opinion for just a moment, what effective bloc of the American political discourse is going to pick up on that sort of subtlety? (And, yes, if you make the point that it's not exactly subtle, well duh.)
That's why I'm curious about our neighbor's take on the cartoon he presented. Rubbish tip advocacy wilding rubbish tip advocacy is just a trashy spectacle.
It cracks me up; the cartoon is an effing disaster, and if our Stranger has a clue why, that's apparently not something we need to know. What is our neighbor's point in relation to this effing disaster? Neither is that something we need to know, it seems. Still, why should everyone else do Stranger's homework?
Then again, check the wannabe iconoclastic retort↑ trying to argue logically according to fallacious presuppositions, but, hey, at least our new neighbor got to call a favorite religion "the bane of any society in the 21st century". I simply cannot responsibly hold Stranger responsible to answer for that catastrophe, but. To the other, 21CI does clearly illustrate the point about the problems of allowing people we believe or know are wrong to set baseline terms and assert fundamental definitions.
Which tend to drive Christian thought in general. Hence the intense hatred of homosexuality and indifference to shrimp. That's part of the problem.
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