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When historical fact slaps down the commonsense notions of biblical ‘accuracy’.
We have not featured Betty Bowers for awhile, thus, enter her definitely non-satirical take on the topic of religious freedom.
When will we have justice? When we apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to our enemies.
Have you heard any of the moderate christian representatives expression contrition for acts of their radical wing? The fact that we expect moderate islamic representatives to apologize is the only lesson you’ll need to know when it comes to creating a just society/world/ et cetera.
*update* – Wrong video was up for awhile. The other is scheduled for later in the week. :) Fixed now.
The cesspool that is toxic masculinity, the sea we all swim in, had a newsworthy (aka an effect on people other than women) peak at the Planned Parenthood in Colorado.
“Three people were killed and nine others injured after gunfire ripped through a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., during an hours-long standoff that unfolded Friday afternoon.
Officials announced the casualties — one police officer and two civilians — at a brief news conference Friday evening.”
The resolution was thus:
“The standoff involved at least two exchanges of gunfire and lasted about five hours, before the gunman was taken into police custody.
“We did get officers inside the building. They were able to shout to the suspect and make communication with him, and at that point they were able to get him to surrender and take him into custody,” said police spokeswoman Lt. Catherine Buckley. He was apprehended at 4:52 p.m. MT.”
Well, so we have the murderer in custody, after a shootout, with police casualties. Care to guess the ethnicity of shooter? (Helpful Clue: He’s still alive). He allegedly said the following:
“He uttered the words “no more baby parts” to police after his arrest, according to a law enforcement official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation. The official did not elaborate on the comment.”
Ah, motivation for saving babies – You would think that endorsing a violent man’s actions in shooting up a women’s medical centre would bring nothing but anger, shock and censure. You would be wrong.
Imagine if you would a salt shaker on your dinner table. Now imagine another shaker on your table, only filled with bullshit. Most of organized religion is this shaker filled with shit that people add (voluntary or not) to the various dishes and activities in their lives. Our happy thought experiment plays on the funny human expectations surrounding how we perceive concepts like ‘purity’ and ‘contamination’; the takeaway for our purposes is that it only takes a little bit of shit to ruin your meal or experience; if you still happen to be following the larger meta-thought that I’m artlessly crafting.
We can boil our fruitful thought experiment down even further and generalize. Take any situation, add shit religion to it, and surprisingly(?) it becomes markedly worse. Take for instance the phenomena in American society known as “Black Friday”. The mythological notion that come the last Friday in November businesses are finally out of the red and into the black ink in their ledgers and to celebrate their profitability they are going to sell stuff at wildly discounted prices to demonstrate their thanks to the public for purchasing their stuff.
Orgies of consumerism are nothing new in the purposefully designed consumer society, but if we take the shit-shaker of christian religion and add it to the mix we get this:
“Onward, Christian soldiers: Research shows the majority of states where shoppers are most likely to experience violence while shopping on Black Friday are located in the Bible Belt.
According to research recently released by Estately management the top ten states where people are most likely to get into fights over discounted deals on Black Friday are 1) Arkansas, 2) Tennessee, 3) Alabama, 4) Louisiana, 5) Missouri, 6) West Virginia, 7) Oklahoma, 8) Indiana, 9) Kansas, and 10) South Carolina.”
So in the home of the great Moral Majority you’re more likely to get into a fight for that last plasma screen TV at your local retailer. Now we shouldn’t read too too much into this unscientific poll, but the results hint at the notion that endorsing religious thought (aka delusional shit) makes you a more aggressive, more selfish, let’s just say it; less Christ-like, than people who don’t partake in magical beliefs.
Apparently, the religious table shakers come pre-loaded with a generous portion of irony as well.
[Source:Progressive Secular Humanist]
Welcome gentle readers. Today I ask of thee but a kernel of patience whilst I set up the topic at hand.
Teh Role of teh Female in the Religious Stuff.
Religion and Patriarchy actively conspire against the female half of humanity. We have to look no further than Christian Patriarchy over here and Islamic Fundamentalism over there to see the corrosive effects of religion on females (and everyone else). We’ve missed talking about a segment of the world religious community that, despite a different set of ooga-booga beliefs, shockingly manages to codify and practice misogyny with great aplomb.
Orthodox Judaism. And behold yet another goldmine of misogyny in which to revel in! (?) Let’s take a peek at a small sample of what we are talking about:
“During the 1970s feminist critics began to expose the absence of women’s voices within the male-dominated structures promoted by Judaism’s exclusively male-authored texts. Feminists also strove to reconstruct the lost voices of women, trying to recover evidence of women’s history and self-understanding that would allow a more diversified picture of the multiple Judaisms that have flourished throughout the Jewish past. While Judaism traditionally defines itself as a divinely revealed religion, its beliefs and practices have been interpreted and regulated almost exclusively by male authorities until the modern period. Feminist analysis has pointed out that men have created the legal systems articulated in the Mishnah, Talmud, and codes of Jewish law, and acted as supreme arbiters of its interpretation by reserving the rabbinate for men. Courts of Jewish law were historically run by male rabbis, and women were excluded as witnesses in most court cases. In rabbinic law, men may contract a marriage or divorce a wife, but women can neither acquire a husband nor divorce him. Women enter into rabbinic discourse as objects of discussion, when their ritual purity, sexual control, or marital status impinges upon men’s lives.
Many Jewish feminists have suggested that the insistence on overwhelmingly male imagery for God was a deliberate effort to strengthen the male-dominated institutional arrangements of Jewish life and undergird male authority over women in the religious and societal realms. As a result, feminist analysis views Jewish texts with suspicion for their collusion with societal patriarchy in silencing women’s voices, or, even worse, as creating patriarchal oppression and endowing it with the aura of divine sanction. At the same time, some feminists have culled biblical and rabbinic texts to find counter-patriarchal traditions that support principles of justice and equality, or voices of trickster women seeking to correct halakhic inequities (Pardes; Adler). Even as D. Setel argued that the prophet Hosea’s metaphor of Israel as God’s adulterous wife was pornographic, R. Adler noted that God’s reunion with the adulterous Israel, which violates Deuteronomic law (20:4) mandating a husband’s divorce of an adulterous wife, might be understood as a “constructive violation” of Jewish law – “the metaphor that preserves the covenant breaks the law” (Adler, 163–64).”
I gave up with the highlighting and bolding after the whole “objects of discussion” malarkey (lobe blown). Anyhow, now with a little background established we can talk about the Hunger Games.
What?
Sham, 1 year old
Roszke/Horgos. In the very front, just alongside the border between Serbia and Hungary by the 4-meter-high iron gate, Sham is laying in his mother’s arms. Just a few decimeters behind them is the Europe they so desperately are trying to reach. Only one day before, the last refugees were allowed through and taken by train to Austria. But Sham and his mother arrived too late, along with thousands of other refugees who now wait outside the closed Hungarian border. Image from: http://darbarnensover.aftonbladet.se/chapter/english-version
After the attacks in Paris, the Governors of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, and the Premier of Saskatchewan, are opposed to receiving Syrian refugees.
I haven’t been able to find out if the Premier of Saskatchewan is a man of any particular faith, but it’s reasonable to assume all those American Governors do profess to be Christian. To them I say:
31“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Even if there are terrorists mingled among the refugees, what kind of country do we want to be? One that turns away thousands of innocents to be sure that not one terrorist gets in (at least, not through that particular process); or one willing to take the risk, to save literally thousands of lives? I know my answer. I stumbled across this tweet that sums it up perfectly:
I hate this idea that taking in Syrian refugees involves no danger. It does. But compassion demands boldness in the face of terror.
— Ferrett Steinmetz (@ferretthimself) November 16, 2015
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