Sometimes I wonder

. . . what our world would be like if the monotheists had never become more than a minor Persian cult.

Continue reading Sometimes I wonder

Better

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop will offer a prayer at the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural event for President-elect Barack Obama.

The selection of New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson for Sunday's event follows weeks of criticism from gay-rights groups over Obama's decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren give the invocation at his Jan. 20 inauguration.

. . .

Robinson, 61, said both Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will attend the event, and Obama is expected to speak. As for himself, Robinson said he doesn't yet know what he'll say, but he knows he won't use a Bible.

"While that is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans," Robinson said. "I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation."

Robinson said his prayer will be reflective of the times.

"I think these are sober and difficult times that we are facing," he said. "It won't be a happy, clappy prayer."

Refreshing.

Continue reading Better

ZOMG!

So, Joe The Plumber thinks that God will protect him while he's in the Middle East because he's a Christian (JtP, that is). I guess now that He's won a BCS championship for the Gators, He's got some free time on his hands.

Wonder if the school/network/NCAA would have allowed him to advertise this message for 3 hours on primetime national TV?

Continue reading ZOMG!

Maybe they can receive posthumous baptism by proxy

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville (South Carolina) that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

Sometimes i can't believe we let these guys run the entirety of western civilization for well over a thousand years. No wonder they're called the Dark Ages.

Continue reading Maybe they can receive posthumous baptism by proxy

More things that i absolutely can't figure out

Posthumous baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.

Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.

I mean, really? People really believe this? You can baptize someone who's been dead for centuries and save their soul so they can be reunited with their dead descendants who've they've never met?

What if the person was, you know, really, really bad, and never repented of their sins? Can that person's soul still be saved ex post facto, so to speak? I'm really not snarking here.

Although i'm not a believer myself, i can at least understand the concept of faith to the extent that it enables, or even requires, one to do good works in order to either fulfill the will of God on earth, or to achieve passage to the good part of the afterlife when you die. But am i correctly interpreting this doctrine to mean that i can be a total non-believing fuckup and 100 years down the road, one of my great grandkids could marry into the Mormon faith, and one of their kids can "stand in" for me in a baptism by proxy, and my soul will be saved? Is that what's really going on here? Doesn't that give me a few extra outs in the game?

Continue reading More things that i absolutely can't figure out

Hagee: Bible is not the infallible word of God

Wall St. Journal:

Hagee’s letter explains some of the harsh words he has used when describing the Catholic Church. “I better understand that reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the ‘apostate church’ and the ‘great whore’ described in the book of Revelation” — both terms Hagee has employed — “is a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary,” he wrote.

After Hagee’s endorsement of McCain, both came under fire after the spotlight was placed on other disparaging comments Hagee has made in the past. The dissection of their relationship – How did the McCain campaign court Hagee’s endorsement? Did he know about Hagee’s comments at the time? – coincided partly with the attention placed on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Barack Obama.

In other words, the Bible means whatever people interpret it to mean. It contains "rhetorical devices."

Who knew?

Continue reading Hagee: Bible is not the infallible word of God

Deeply held religious beliefs

I don't know if this is better or worse than a state run lottery:

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."

To be honest, though, i don't see any reason for the Senate to be investigating this. If you're meshuggah enough to fall for this kind of bullshit, maybe you shouldn't be around a checkbook in the first place.

Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting (Iowa Senator Charles) Grassley's inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.

In a letter to Grassley, Dollar's attorney calls the prosperity gospel a "deeply held religious belief" grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.

Continue reading Deeply held religious beliefs

Death cults?

Here's a photo i took this morning on the way to work. Seems the megachurch on highway 70 is running a series through October on marriage, specifically on marriage encounter, which, as i recall, seeks to prevent married couple from choosing divorce as an option when they reach that point in their marriage where the cons begin to outweigh the pros. To the best of my knowledge, encounter began within the Catholic Church, which does not recognize divorce at all. A quick google reveals that a whole lot of denominations have taken up this program. There are Jewish encounter programs, Mennonite programs, and geographically based programs in practically every corner of the globe.

Here's my question.

I know that designing billboards and attempting to catch the attention of people whizzing by in their cars at 55 mph is a difficult task. But why the ultra-prominent use of the word "death" in this sign? Isn't marriage one of the most life affirming acts we can undertake? Why focus on the end of the marriage, rather than its ongoing process? (Maybe "For better or for worse" is already trademarked by that comic strip, but there are other phrases commonly associated with marriage vows that are equally recognizable. For that matter, my own recently undertaken vows used the phrase "for as long as you both shall live" in preference to the more morbid "til death us do part.")

And the larger question, which i ask sincerely, is why the focus on death and the afterlife in so many monotheistic practices, not only many Christian denomnations, but Muslim as well. I understand, from a sociological/political viewpoint the advantages to an elite of having a group of followers willing to discount their current material conditions, and thus be more willing to donate the fruits of their labor back to the elite, in favor of promised but undefined benefits in some unverifiable future.

But studies consistently show that, in the US in particular, overwhelming majorities believe in Heaven and Hell as actual places in which individual human consciousness, and perhaps human bodies as well, will reside for a very long time. Which i don't get at all.

I'm one of those people who believes you're born, you die, and if you're very lucky, you get to do some good stuff in between. So i'm asking any of my readers who do believe in the afterlife to chime in and talk about this. Help me understand what it is about this concept that explains the world around us in a way that makes sense to you.

Continue reading Death cults?