The Hazards of Belief

RikuoAmero

A Harry Potter fanfiction by a very concerned christian mother. She's so worried that reading the real series will lead her children to witchcraft that she's taken it upon herself to rewrite the series without any magic in it. The least of her problems is that the characters have a tendency to treat God as a magic vending machine, teleporting and providing food on demand. Oh yeah, and there's blatant racism and bigotry. Read the description of Ron and try to find out what she wants him to represent.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10644439/1/Hogwarts-School-of-Prayer-and-Miracles

biko

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11121519/Ultra-Orthodox-Jews-cause-chaos-on-flight-to-Israel.html

An El-Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was turned into an “11-hour nightmare” after hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women.
According to those on board the flight descended into chaos because of their demands.

The flight was full with Israelis, secular, orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews – known as Haredim – flying home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

Even though the passengers had been pre-assigned seats before boarding, the ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to accept the arrangements because their beliefs required that men and women were segregated.

robindch

RikuoAmero wrote: »

A Harry Potter fanfiction by a very concerned christian mother. She's so worried that reading the real series will lead her children to witchcraft that she's taken it upon herself to rewrite the series without any magic in it.

Grace Ann wrote:

I am being given the talent to pull this off

*cough*

PopePalpatine

I guess she isn't being given the grammar to pull this off. :pac:

robindch

Am I being poe'd in this?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uri-geller-identifies-the-real-reason-the-iphone-6-bends-2014-09-24

Uri Geller, maybe wrote:

Either the phone is so seriously thin and flimsy that it is bendable with mere physical force, which I cannot believe given the extensive tests Apple would have done. Or — and this is far more plausible — somehow the energy and excitement of the 10 million people who purchased iPhones has awakened their mind powers and caused the phones to bend.

RikuoAmero

robindch wrote: »

*cough*

In her latest chapters, she says she's going to take writing classes (her husband allows her to go, she mentions). Given that this is a clear admittance on her part that she lacks writing talent, doesn't this invalidate her claim from earlier about God giving her the talent?

Eeden

RikuoAmero wrote: »

In her latest chapters, she says she's going to take writing classes (her husband allows her to go, she mentions). Given that this is a clear admittance on her part that she lacks writing talent, doesn't this invalidate her claim from earlier about God giving her the talent?

I can't believe you read that far!

Sadly, I know someone like this. Someone who used to be a smart, funny, irreverent person.

I found the whole thing so sad ... the first thing that struck me was that Aunt Petunia was obviously a Bad Person, because she was a ... (gasp!!) ... Career Woman!

TwoShedsJackson

biko wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11121519/Ultra-Orthodox-Jews-cause-chaos-on-flight-to-Israel.html

Cabaal

Devil worshiping Catholics

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29448079

The 500-year-old mines of Bolivia's Cerro Rico mountain produced the silver that once made the Spanish empire rich. Now riddled with tunnels, the mountain is a death trap for the men and boys who work there - and who pray to the devil to keep them safe.

"Usually we gather here on Fridays to make offerings, in gratitude because he gave us lots of minerals, and so that he will protect us from accidents.

"Outside the mine we are Catholics, and when we enter the mine, we worship the devil."

legspin

Cabaal wrote: »

Devil worshiping Catholics

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29448079

The 500-year-old mines of Bolivia's Cerro Rico mountain produced the silver that once made the Spanish empire rich. Now riddled with tunnels, the mountain is a death trap for the men and boys who work there - and who pray to the devil to keep them safe.

Not really that much difference to my grandfather placating the Piseogs by tipping the first glass of his latest brew against the side of the barrel it was distilled in. Staunch Taig, believed in fairies.

robindch

Denmark bans "kosher" meat as the minister responsible says that the right of animals to humane treatment supercedes the right of religious people to ignore it. Jewish religious leaders called the decision "anti-semitic":

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-bans-halal-and-kosher-slaughter-as-minister-says-animal-rights-come-before-religion-9135580.html

Meanwhile, in New York, animal rights activists are upset at the way some animals are treated in some jewish religious ceremonies:

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.618726

oscarBravo

robindch wrote: »

Denmark bans "kosher" meat as the minister responsible says that the right of animals to humane treatment supercedes the right of religious people to ignore it. Jewish religious leaders called the decision "anti-semitic":

Some of the tweets quoted in that article have me banging my head off my desk:

On Twitter, David Krikler (@davekriks) wrote: “In Denmark butchering a healthy giraffe in front of kids is cool but a kosher/halal chicken is illegal.”

Byakuya Ali-Hassan (@SirOthello) said it was “disgusting” that “the same country that slaughtered a giraffe in public to be fed to lions… is banning halal meat because of the procedures”.

The art of the non-sequitur is alive and well, I see.

RikuoAmero

oscarBravo wrote: »

Some of the tweets quoted in that article have me banging my head off my desk: The art of the non-sequitur is alive and well, I see.

Well, they do have a point. It makes the country look hypocritical if on the one hand, they kill a giraffe in front of a bunch of young schoolkids, dissect it, feed it to lions...while on the other banning kosher meat citing "animal rights" as justification.
Just to be clear, I'm not agreeing with the Jews here.

Brian Shanahan

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Well, they do have a point. It makes the country look hypocritical if on the one hand, they kill a giraffe in front of a bunch of young schoolkids, dissect it, feed it to lions...while on the other banning kosher meat citing "animal rights" as justification.
Just to be clear, I'm not agreeing with the Jews here.

The difference being that they killed the giraffe in a humane manner, stunning it first to ensure it felt no pain, whereas kosher meat is killed by slitting its throat in a fairly gruesome manner.

RikuoAmero

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

The difference being that they killed the giraffe in a humane manner, stunning it first to ensure it felt no pain, whereas kosher meat is killed by slitting its throat in a fairly gruesome manner.

Ah, that was a detail I didn't know about the zoo giraffe killing incident. Thanks.

oscarBravo

SCOTUS ruling on prayer before government meetings... backfires.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/27/scalia-law-backfires-pagan-prayer-at-govt-meeting-pisses-off-tevangelicals-video/

Hotblack Desiato

legspin wrote: »

Not really that much difference to my grandfather placating the Piseogs by tipping the first glass of his latest brew against the side of the barrel it was distilled in. Staunch Taig, believed in fairies.

Any knowledgeable distiller throws away the 'lights' (containing lots of methanol) and the 'tails' (fusel and heavy alcohols) so I suspect he was just throwing the useless/dangerous lights away and not the good stuff!

SebBerkovich

oscarBravo wrote: »

SCOTUS ruling on prayer before government meetings... backfires.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/27/scalia-law-backfires-pagan-prayer-at-govt-meeting-pisses-off-tevangelicals-video/

That pagan's got a fine set of pipes - i came dangerously close to converting..

legspin

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Any knowledgeable distiller throws away the 'lights' (containing lots of methanol) and the 'tails' (fusel and heavy alcohols) so I suspect he was just throwing the useless/dangerous lights away and not the good stuff!

Undoubtedly, but a bit like the rituals and invocations of alchemists the reason had been lost in the superstition.

robindch

Religion not as convincing as it once was - a retired preacher abandons his former religion. Cracking last para

http://www.lfpress.com/2014/09/26/ripley-how-my-mind-has-changed

Bob Ripley wrote:

n over 25 years of writing a column every week, this one may be the most challenging. For you and for me. As with my years of preaching, my writing has tried to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Whether you agree or disagree with something in this column, the goal is always to provoke thought.

That said, I need to tell you that I’ve changed my mind. Where once I proclaimed the doctrines of Christianity with passion and sincerity, I am now convinced that religion, all religion, is man-made. As with the long line of deities dotting the history of our species, the idea of one God, Yahweh, made manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, is our means to an end — to explain how we got here, for instance, or to avoid looking fate in the face or to gain an edge over our enemies.

Deep breath. This was not an overnight decision. I didn’t go to bed one night this week a believer and wake up an unbeliever. I wasn’t blinded on Tuesday by the light of reason that led to a deconversion. I began this journey more than seven years ago. It led initially to me taking early retirement from ministry and has continued over the ensuing five years. There is not the space here to detail each signpost along my sojourn from faith. They are meticulously chronicled in my latest book, Life Beyond Belief: A Preacher’s Deconversion, being released this week.

In short, after pondering the age and span of the cosmos, the elegant simplicity of evolution by natural selection, the ruthlessness of the God of the Bible, the enigma of expiation for sin by blood sacrifice, the discrepancies in Scripture, the antagonisms and animosities derived from religious fervour and the violence and corruption in church history, adherence to my former beliefs was no longer possible.

Why not keep my doubts to myself? Part of me would like to keep silent out of the fear that people may think less of me or get angry with me and tell me so. After all, I have been writing this column for some time without revealing my growing unbelief. I could take this secret to my grave. But I also know how crippling secrets are and that it is important every once in a while to tell the secret of who we are. If we don’t, we risk coming to believe the edited version of ourselves we hope others will find acceptable.

All of us, religious or not, should value authenticity. If we do, then we should encourage not only critical thinking but also intellectual honesty without fear of rejection or reprisal. My disclosure carries the risks of losing friends and facing disappointment and disapproval from those who once admired my spirituality. Belief, however, is not something you can fake, or should fake. Let’s return to my two overriding motives in preaching and writing: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

If you are wrestling with the tenets of your religion and/or the increasing insights of science to explain reality, if you have elected to eschew religious creeds quietly so as not to offend or feel isolated, then you may be comforted to know that you’re not the only one. If you are a committed believer, my testimony of deconversion may challenge you to take your convictions more seriously than ever before and examine evidence you may never have encountered before. My goal is not to disabuse you of your faith but to share my personal testimony of deconversion and with it a call for all of us to constantly test and examine our assumptions.

As a dear friend who leads a church in Brooklyn writes in the forward to Life Beyond Belief, “if you’re a Christian, you should take this book seriously, and if you’re not . . . you’ll find companionship.” If all this makes you sad, I’m sorry. Please remember that I have not changed. The heart that was once surrendered to Jesus Christ, that gave itself to others and infused a vocation with kindness, still beats in me. If you have ever met me, know that the person I was then, I am now, still striving for integrity and capable of profound love.

I’m not lost. I began this journey by asking questions. It continued by not being content with trite cliches or lazy affirmations. Curiosity is an amazing accelerant. I am a passionate advocate for unremitting intellectual honesty, for reason and reality, for love and learning. My advocacy simply no longer assumes a deity.

I still believe. I believe no person or group of persons is inferior to any other. I believe that what matters is not so much what we believe, but how we conduct ourselves for these few short, fragile years of being alive. I believe that being aware of the beauty and wonder of the universe, including this pale blue dot in the remote corner of one of billions of galaxies, is an indescribably wonderful privilege. On that, at least, I hope we can all agree.

Nodin

Reviews of the "Left Behind" movie are in -

"Score one for Satan"
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/left_behind_2014/

Hotblack Desiato

robindch wrote: »

Religion not as convincing as it once was - a retired preacher abandons his former religion. Cracking last para

http://www.lfpress.com/2014/09/26/ripley-how-my-mind-has-changed

From now on his column will be called "Ripley's Believe It Or Not".

Hotblack Desiato

A new mourning: grief in the digital age

Irish Times wrote:

Dr Elaine Kasket, a counselling psychologist at Regent’s University in London, says there’s nothing “abnormal or complicated” about grieving through the digital world, and that it can make bereavement “a much less isolating experience”.

Appropriate surname :pac:

Kasket has found that young people often consider a Facebook message or email the most effective way of maintaining a connection with a dead family member or friend. “I’ve had participants tell me, ‘If I stand by her grave and talk to her I’m not sure if she can hear me, but if I write on her Facebook page, I’m pretty sure she can see that’.”

Czarcasm

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

A new mourning: grief in the digital age

Double facepalm? That's being kind tbh -

robindch

Kenya #pantsdown

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29459415

BBC wrote:

Footage of a pastor caught with a young woman in a hotel room has caused controversy in Kenya. But who was behind the video, and many others just like it? The film looks like an episode of Cheaters, the American TV programme in which a television crew tracks down unfaithful partners and catches them red-handed - with the cameras rolling of course.

It was broadcast on a news programme in Kenya, and appears to show Anglican pastor Charles Githinji half dressed in a hotel room with a pretty young woman. Another man, claiming to be the woman's husband, bursts into the room with a television crew in tow. The sheepish pastor scrambles for his clothes, but not before being quizzed by the people behind the camera. A version uploaded to YouTube has been watched 250,000 times, and Kenyans began tweeting about the story using the hashtag #PantsDown. The phrase has appeared more than 2,500 times in the last few days, though not every instance was related to the pastor's story.

It was not an isolated incident. Similar videos on YouTube - all of which appear to expose Kenyan pastors in similar situations - have racked up hundreds of thousands of views. In Githinji's case, some are convinced that a team of people colluded in an attempt to entrap the pastor, and make money from the footage. "It was stage managed," says Jackson Njeru, a prominent Kenyan blogger who created the controversial Facebook page Deadbeat Kenya. "When I watched the video, something was not adding up. The lady was smiling. She was laughing," he tells BBC Trending. He believes the woman, her "husband" and the television crew were working in collaboration - one of a number of groups that deliberately target pastors and other powerful individuals.

Ruth Nesoba, a BBC journalist based in Kenya, says "apparently what is emerging is a clique of freelance cameramen who are going round looking for these kind of stories." News outlets pay good money for the footage, she adds, as the stories attract wide audiences. It isn't yet clear whether Githinji's encounter with the woman arose organically, or he was targeted in a sting operation. Either way, Nesoba thinks that for many Kenyans, it isn't the most important question. "People are asking: 'Whether he was lured or not, what is a pastor doing in bed with his pants down with a woman who is not is wife?' " The Anglican Church in Kenya has now launched an official investigation.

Bannasidhe

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

The difference being that they killed the giraffe in a humane manner, stunning it first to ensure it felt no pain, whereas kosher meat is killed by slitting its throat in a fairly gruesome manner.

Hmmm... I've been in abattoirs and saw cows being slaughtered in this so-called 'humane manner' - I still have nightmares about it and if anyone thinks they don't feel pain or know what is happening then they are deluding themselves.
What I saw was bored employees who didn't give a f*uck if the cow was stunned or not and fully conscious terrified animals hung upside down waiting to have their throats cut.

I have also seen animals butchered according to Halal - they never knew what was about to happen.

I know which one struck me as more 'humane'.

Brian Shanahan

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Hmmm... I've been in abattoirs and saw cows being slaughtered in this so-called 'humane manner' - I still have nightmares about it and if anyone thinks they don't feel pain or know what is happening then they are deluding themselves.
What I saw was bored employees who didn't give a f*uck if the cow was stunned or not and fully conscious terrified animals hung upside down waiting to have their throats cut.

I have also seen animals butchered according to Halal - they never knew what was about to happen.

I know which one struck me as more 'humane'.

That's a function of the regulatory system not being worth a **** under capitalism rather than the humane slaughtering methods not working. Under proper conditions pre-stunning is the least painful and traumatic method, by a country mile.

recedite

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Hmmm... I've been in abattoirs and saw cows being slaughtered in this so-called 'humane manner' - I still have nightmares about it and if anyone thinks they don't feel pain or know what is happening then they are deluding themselves.
What I saw was bored employees who didn't give a f*uck if the cow was stunned or not and fully conscious terrified animals hung upside down waiting to have their throats cut.

I have also seen animals butchered according to Halal - they never knew what was about to happen.

I know which one struck me as more 'humane'.

I've never been inside an abattoir, but I saw a TV documentary which went inside one, which was mostly a fairly standard one, but there was also one halal butcher operating there. The "pre-stunned" animals were not always stunned properly, and the employees seemed very callous. In contrast, the one guy doing the halal slaughtering was very conscientious about his job, sharpening the knife before each use. Given the sharpness of the knife and his expertise, and the bucketfuls of blood that poured out in the first seconds, the cattle didn't seem to get a chance to feel anything before they collapsed. I suppose in a muslim country, the halal butchers might not be so good at their job, because they don't have to be.

The answer IMO is better regulation and supervision, whichever method is used, and also better treatment of the animals during transportation and in the holding pens. Farmed deer are more fortunate than domesticated animals. They panic easily, and the adrenaline in the meat reduces its value. So they are generally slaughtered at the farm in a darkened room, in a very calm condition. No live transport or unfamiliar holding pens for them.

Bannasidhe

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

That's a function of the regulatory system not being worth a **** under capitalism rather than the humane slaughtering methods not working. Under proper conditions pre-stunning is the least painful and traumatic method, by a country mile.

Slaughtering is slaughtering and to think some underpaid bored guys give a feck about the animals is to delude ourselves.

What I saw in a small, family owned abbatoir was not animals being stunned just more pain being inflicted , then terror as the cows were hung upside down fully conscious in a position that they could see what was happening.

This all done with an 'audience' of chefs - I dread to think what goes on when there was no audience or in a large operation. And, as a chef, I can say with certainty that their knives were no where near sharp enough. More than once several attempts had to be made to cut the animals throats.

And no, I am not a vegetarian but I do prefer to buy kosher or halal as in my experience the killing is actually far more humane.

marienbad

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Slaughtering is slaughtering and to think some underpaid bored guys give a feck about the animals is to delude ourselves.

What I saw in a small, family owned abbatoir was not animals being stunned just more pain being inflicted , then terror as the cows were hung upside down fully conscious in a position that they could see what was happening.

This all done with an 'audience' of chefs - I dread to think what goes on when there was no audience or in a large operation. And, as a chef, I can say with certainty that their knives were no where near sharp enough. More than once several attempts had to be made to cut the animals throats.

And no, I am not a vegetarian but I do prefer to buy kosher or halal as in my experience the killing is actually far more humane.

Just because humane methods are carried out badly is no argument against them .