The Hazards of Belief

joseph brand

robindch

Randomly generate your own maths papers!

http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/

But don't do this:

http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102

Hotblack Desiato

They're clearly a joke if they think Word is an appropriate formate for anything, but especially mathematics papers :rolleyes:

pauldla

You do the crime, you do the time, eh?

Pussy Riot pair sent to 'slave labour' prison camps

TWO PUSSY Riot members jailed for singing a protest song against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a cathedral have been sent to prison camps infamous for their tough regime.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/1023/1224325577449.html

Obliq

pauldla wrote: »

You do the crime, you do the time, eh?

Pussy Riot pair sent to 'slave labour' prison camps


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/1023/1224325577449.html

F********k.....looks like they'll learn not to do that again. Hope they survive it - they're very brave women.

robindch

A suicidal doomsday cult from Brazil is saved from themselves in the nick of time. The comments of Officer Meneses, halfway down in bold, are elegantly understated.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2216743/Shots-fired-police-swoop-10-minutes-100-followers-Brazilian-doomsday-cult-commit-mass-suicide-world-ended.html

Daily Mail wrote:

Police swooped on a Brazilian doomsday cult just 10 minutes before more than 100 followers were about to commit mass suicide by drinking poisoned soup

Elite troops burst into a building where self-proclaimed prophet Luis Pereira dos Santos had barricaded himself in after predicting the world would end at 8pm yesterday. There was believed to be an exchange of gunfire between the group and police who used gas bombs and pepper spray during the assault. No casualties have been reported.

Santos, known to his flock as Daddy Luis, claims an angel visited four years ago telling him at 4pm local time (8pm BST) Santos was arrested as officers took away a tub containing a sweet paste made from Caju fruit which they suspected contained a toxic product. The night before 19 children were rescued from the building on the outskirts of Teresina, the capital of the country's northeastern state of Piaui.

Police forced their way in after receiving 'credible' information of a suicide pact. The stand-off began at 3pm local time - an hour before the predicted apocalypse - when 60 military and police officers surrounded the house. One of the followers, Maria Silva, 57, came out to tell the crowd that 'Jesus Christ is in the body of the prophet' and that no-one would be allowed in or out the residence.

Desperate relatives of those inside tried to invade the building to take their loved ones out. Maria Madalena, 39, told Brazil's Cidade Verde website: 'We want to get my mother out while there is still time. This man has messed up her head, it's like she's been brainwashed.' Authorities kept a close watch on the children placed in care homes over fears they had been instructed to take their own lives at the same time.

During the operation, a 'significant quantity' of rat poison was found at the residence, a police spokesman said. After the raid, military police commander Alberto Meneses said: 'This was an unusual situation, because when religion is involved everything is possible and nothing is predictable.'

Santos, known to his flock as Daddy Luis, had claimed an angel visited four years ago telling him the exact time the world was going to end. Last month, the 43-year-old spiritual leader instructed his 113 followers to leave their jobs, give away all their possessions and take their children out of school, police confirmed. The group then holed up inside a ten-bedroom house, which they called The Ark. The end of the world was predicted on a public holiday in Brazil, the feast day of the country's patron saint Our Lady of Aparecida, as well as national Children's Day. Although the group didn't put up any resistance, one of the cult members, Maria Francisca Alves, 38, whose 12-year-old daughter was taken away by police, protested the action.

Asked why she had taken her daughter out of school, she said: 'We're preparing for the end of the world, so what's the point of studying? Learning the word of God is more important.' Children's judge Maria Luiza de Moura, who issued the protection order, said: 'We believe that a mass suicide or murder may happen using a soup ingested by cult members. 'The adults are free to act of their free and spontaneous will, but we have to make sure that nothing happens to the children.'

The police chief leading the investigation, Joatan Goncalves, said: 'Our worry is if there are offered a toxic product claiming to offer salvation on Friday.' In an interview with Brazil's Terra website, divorced father-of-five Santos, a former caretaker, said he didn't fear the police and denied that the group were planning to drink poison. He said: 'I preach the gospel and it says thou shalt no kill. We will be saved and raptured in another way.'

The former Catholic said most of his followers are former street beggars, prostitutes, drug dealers and criminals which God had told him to 'save'. He said: 'I received a message telling me to be a shepherd to lost sheep. I am Christ's advocate. From Friday night there will be only darkness, because the beast will come out of the abyss and the world will end. 'People call me crazy, even my wife abandoned me, but I am sure that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and the good people will be taken away.' After Santos was arrested, police occupied the building where the rest of the cult members remain.

The largest recorded cult suicide was in 1978 when People's Temple leader Jim Jones inspired 918 of his followers to kill themselves in Guyana by drinking cyanide. From 1994 to 1997, members of the Order of the Solar Temple sect began a series of mass suicides, which lead to around 74 deaths. In 1997, 39 followers of the Heaven's Gate cult died in a mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California, believing their souls would journey aboard a spaceship they believed to be following the Hale-Bopp comet.

FouxDaFaFa

I'd love to hear from the cult members now that the time has passed and the world didn't end. On the one hand, I feel sorry for them because there must be some element of shared psychosis or something but when they involve their children it changes things. If they were about to murder their children they should face legal consequences.

Also, "Daddy Luis"? Why must their names always be so creepy?

robindch

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Also, "Daddy Luis"? Why must their names always be so creepy?

Weird, the same thing occurred -- it seems to be an authority/respect thing, but with all kinds of ickky overtones.

Bannasidhe

robindch wrote: »

Weird, the same thing occurred -- it seems to be an authority/respect thing, but with all kinds of ickky overtones.

Jones insisted on being called Father or Dad too.

Dades

I'm glad we don't have crazy cults in Ireland ran by people wanting to be called Father this, or Father that...

Bannasidhe

Dades wrote: »

I'm glad we don't have crazy cults in Ireland ran by people wanting to be called Father this, or Father that...

Wouldn't that be Mad!

It would be like calling an 80 year old female virgin 'Mother Superior' - crazy stuff.

robindch

Dades wrote: »

I'm glad we don't have crazy cults in Ireland ran by people wanting to be called Father this, or Father that...

Absolutely not -- it's against god's law!:

Matthew 23:9 wrote:

Don’t call anyone on earth your father. All of you have the same Father in heaven.

I'm glad that god's law is unchanging and not at all relativist!

Nodin

A Republican US Senate candidate has come under fire for suggesting that pregnancies caused by rape were "something God intended to happen".

Mr Mourdock was asked during a debate with Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly whether he believed abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.
"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realise that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20054737

Another charmer.

Penn

robindch wrote: »

A suicidal doomsday cult from Brazil is saved from themselves in the nick of time. The comments of Officer Meneses, halfway down in bold, are elegantly understated.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2216743/Shots-fired-police-swoop-10-minutes-100-followers-Brazilian-doomsday-cult-commit-mass-suicide-world-ended.html

If the world was going to end, a) Why kill yourself? You'll die anyway, and b) Suicide is a sin, therefore you would be facilitating your own descent into Hell.

Daddy Luis must be very convincing. I mean, even if I did believe in God, those would be the first two queries I would have and would require a pretty good f*cking answer to make me agree to kill myself.

Nodin wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20054737

Another charmer.

God intends for women to be raped.

And people still choose to follow him? I think I'd almost prefer Daddy Luis...

Hotblack Desiato

Dades wrote: »

I'm glad we don't have crazy cults in Ireland ran by people wanting to be called Father this, or Father that...

Ted: It's not as if everyone's going to go off and join some mad religious cult just because we go off for a picnic for a couple of hours.
Dougal: God, Ted, I heard about those cults. Everyone dressing in black and saying our Lord's gonna come back and judge us all!
Ted: No... No, Dougal, that's us. That's Catholicism.

Gbear

I wouldn't mind if it was in the comedy section or the religion section but this was in the property section of the Irish Times:

Meet the ghostbusters
Owning a home can be terrifying for all sorts of reasons, but what if your scares before bedtime aren’t financial but spectral? When things go bump in the night who do you call? Meet the real-life ghostbusters who check out paranormal activity, writes ALANNA GALLAGHER
[...]
One such site cleanser is Martin Flanagan. He describes geopathic stress as: “A disease of the earth, a contamination coming from water lines, from mineral contamination or from the people in the property.”

It can manifest itself in several ways, he says. “If a room is cold that is a sign of geopathic stress. Or if strange things happen, such as lights coming on when you’ve switched them off, or heating coming on by itself.” Where properties have been built on the sites of ancient graveyards or maybe have had something violent happen in them, it “distorts the energy in the house”, he says.

In Sweden and parts of Germany some councils require a geopathic stress test before granting planning permission. Ghosts are not always a bad thing though. Castle Leslie hotel in Co Monaghan has made its resident spooks a selling point.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/property/2012/1025/1224325656678.html

Dades

And here's a thread in fact.

Gbear

Dades wrote: »

And here's a thread in fact.

Yeah, but I posted first so I win atheism.

Hotblack Desiato

ninja900 wrote: »

Ted: It's not as if everyone's going to go off and join some mad religious cult just because we go off for a picnic for a couple of hours.
Dougal: God, Ted, I heard about those cults. Everyone dressing in black and saying our Lord's gonna come back and judge us all!
Ted: No... No, Dougal, that's us. That's Catholicism.

Wow, probably the most thanks I'll ever get - why, thank yew - and it was a pretty obvious content-free Fr Ted quote-post I'd already posted here a few months ago :rolleyes: :pac: are standards slipping here :eek:

Hotblack Desiato

I look forward to a time when Fr Ted makes no more sense to the Irish people than Ancient Greek. A legacy of the far past that only a few feel the need to study. Still, I think you need to have been enrolled in an RCC school in the 70s to really get it

Nodin

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- A critically acclaimed exhibit of Aphrodite opened to great fanfare at the San Antonio Museum of Art in September. But controversy is brewing over one of the exhibit's featured statuettes.

The museum tried to spread the word about this rare exhibit, so it put together an advertisement for Aphrodite.
The San Antonio Current, San Antonio Magazine, San Antonio Jewish Journal and San Antonio Business Journal didn't blanch whatsoever, and ran the ad.
But, others blushed...and censored it.

"Our visitors think this show is incredible," said SAMA director, Dr. Katie Luber.

SAMA takes great pride in its new Aphrodite exhibit. It is especially proud of a 2,000-year-old statuette of the Greek goddess emerging from the sea. But, it never really fathomed the controversy stirred by the ancient sculpture.

http://www.kvue.com/news/Naked-Aphrodite-stirs-SAMA-ad-controversy-175709981.html

This, afaik, is the debauched horror thats so shocked them....

robindch

Nodin wrote: »

This, afaik, is the debauched horror thats so shocked them....

I hope everybody remembers John Ashcroft and the errant nipple at the US Department of Justice?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm

Another proud moment brought to you by the Republican Party!

Bannasidhe

robindch wrote: »

I hope everybody remembers John Ashcroft and the errant nipple at the US Department of Justice?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm

Another proud moment brought to you by the Republican Party!

Some people do get their holy knickers in a twist about the human body - you'd think they would be ok with it seeing as we are apparently made in the image of the creator they worship .

It would make more sense if they insisted on compulsory nudity so the creators handiwork could be viewed unhindered...*sigh*...I just don't understand how the religious mind works....

Nodin

robindch wrote: »

I hope everybody remembers John Ashcroft and the errant nipple at the US Department of Justice?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm

Another proud moment brought to you by the Republican Party!

Who could forget John "let the Eagle soar" Ashcroft.

robindch

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I just don't understand how the religious mind works....

Jonathan Haidt's one of the better researchers in this area:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc

Sulla Felix

Bannasidhe wrote: »

It would make more sense if they insisted on compulsory nudity so the creators handiwork could be viewed unhindered...*sigh*...I just don't understand how the religious mind works....

This sounds like a religion that I might be able to get behind.

Nodin

Sulla Felix wrote: »

This sounds like a religion that I might be able to get behind.

...until ye see me peel off the y-fronts.

ShooterSF

Sulla Felix wrote: »

This sounds like a religion that I might be able to get behind.

Oh you'd get more behind than you ever wanted!

bnt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md18O3vHxcM

"That preaches in Texas, don't it? California, they're still looking at me sideways ..."

obplayer

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224581/David-Jimenez-loses-leg-crucifix-prayed-cure-wifes-cancer-falls-him.html