Well, Myrtle, it turns out that I actually do care that he is a nutball after all! I just read up a little on Huckabee and Blarg is right, he is kind of nutty. I'm really disappointed! What the hell is going on with these Christians? Reading about his attitude towards gays, wow, just very troubling. I have enjoyed watching him on TV though, he's a lot funnier than Palin by a mile and I think he's far far more intelligent and less terrifying (though Hobby is right that anyone would be more intelligent than an adult who doesn't understand Africa is a continent. holy **** )

Man, I'm starting to become disillusioned with my own faith. I know some devout Christians and they are nothing like Palin or Huckabee. They support gay rights and are opposed to war. They would never incite hate against a decent man like Obama. What the hell kind of Christianity is this? Excuse me, I think I'm going to go have a personal crisis now.

You have to remember that there are all kinds of Christians just like there are all kinds of people in this world. Some are nuts and extremists and others are a lot more "normal". It is normal to question your beliefs. You just need to remember that just because one person, who is a Christian, may think a certain way it does not mean ALL Christians think that way. If that were true I would have to believe that all people who consider themselves to be Democrats are tree hugging, liberal, gun banning pansies who see the world through rose colored glasses believing that the world is now instantly a better place since their man won the election.

This is coming from a Non-Christian for what it is worth. I am playing about the whole democrat thing too, other than for comparison or something. Don't you Dems get all bent out of shape, I am PLAYING and I know better than to actually believe something like that!!!

I am at a loss. How can people have such completely different understanding of the most fundamental basic core values of their shared faith? Either I am wrong or they are wrong. Whichever it is it is mind boggling how either of us could be so very wrong in our interpretation.

Ya, I know what you mean and frankly it is one reason why I say I am a Non-Christian. But that is my deal and there are a lot of other reasons and I do not want you to think I am trying to push you away from your beliefs.

As you may know I work for a Catholic organization so I see a lot of how the Catholic/Christian faith "works". I was in a meeting/leadership training the other day and we spent all day working on one of the Values our organization lists, which is based on Catholic values. It was on Respect and it stressed the Catholic belief that every human life has value. The reason, we are all created in God's image and are a "part" of him. That's paraphrasing but the basic idea. this means that everyone has value even people who have done terrible things like molest children, murder others and well really anything. But yet the Catholic church and many other for that matter will shun Homosexuals thinking it is an abomination or something which I find disturbing.

Anyway, what I have learned is to find the good in your faith and in my case from the view of a non-believer find the many good things good things that are wrapped up in religion. Stuff like "love your neighbor" and "Do unto other as you would have them do unto you".

But this is a political thread and I don't wish to derail it so I will leave it at that.

Start a new thread on it imo

You're not derailing. These days, it's nearly impossible to separate politics and religion. "God bless you and God bless the United States" ends nearly every political speech.

Katy, in the Mass/RI area, Catholics are much more tolerant, and many favor Gay rights and are pro-choice. Note, for example, that Rhode Islanders, who may have the highest percentage of Catholics per capita of any state, overwhelmingly voted for Obama by nearly a two to one ratio.

Katy,

Zealots and extremists at BOTH ends of the spectrum tend to cause any rational person to question their own sanity.

You ask.........What kind of Christianity are we seeing today? The simple answer is a return to what is called Fundamentalism, which I believe is an abhorrent distortion of the basic precepts of Christianity, as Fundamentalist Muslims are to their religion.

In any case, it probably makes more sense to start a new thread about the subject should you wish to encourage discussion instead of diluting this one, which methinks still has much virtue.

Ironic we are on this. As you may or may not know, Prop 8 passed in California. This is about banning gay marriage. It lost by a very slim margin. So slim, in fact, that the results weren't known until Wednesday.

I am all for civil liberties and freedom of speech, but what the gay community did last night is plain wrong. There was an impromptu rally on Santa Monica Boulevard, which turned into a protest with people laying on the sidewalk. After a while, the crown grew so big that they marched up and down several major streets, during traffic hours. In Los Angeles. This just rude. It took me four hours to get home last night. Some people really do have to get to work, go home, etc.

I think this makes the gay community look very bad.

I've never been a big fan of obstructing the streets either. One gay guy threw a bottle at a passing truck full of cholo-looking dudes and got punched out. Can't say I felt sorry for him.

Please to be explaining.

A post of things to come...lovely shoe shot

McCain vs. Palin

In Obamas speech where he talked about the horrors McCain has suffered for his country



He meant campaigning with Palin right?

I wonder about that. Sometimes it seems like either the Dems or the Reps do their best to run such a poor campaign that they are trying to lose. This election is especially true. How many mistakes did McCain really think he could make and still have this thing, without stealing the election. Even at that, people would have cried foul.

Looking back at 200, when it was Bush vs Gore. There was that controversy about Gore saying he helped create the internet. After getting called out on it, he apologized for telling a lie, never mind that he is on the board for apple computer, etc, and as I understand, actually did have a hand in helping create the internet.

Then 2004, with Kerry, he was such a boring, uninspired guy, no one in their right mind actually wanted to vote for him, they only voted against Bush. Hell, that year, we could have had Palin running as a Dem, and the election would still be close.

And speaking of Palin, did you guys hear that she didn't know Africa was a Continent. Yes, people, she actually thought it was one large country.

LOL I heard that too. The scary thing about Palin is not that she doesn't know a lot. It's that she has demonstrated ZERO interest in learning about the world around her. She seems proudly provincial, uninterested in things that do not effect her directly up in Alaska. She couldn't even name a magazine or newspaper she reads regularly. But then again, religious fanatics are not exactly known for their sense of curiosity about the world around them.

Probably the only truly acceptable prejudice anymore is against people who don't believe in god at all. I hope I live long enough to see an atheist become president of the USA, I'd probably be as happy as the black community is for Obama.

I would have loved it if Obama was actually a Muslim. Speaking of ironic, according to Bill Mahar, the black community had the largest percentage of voting no on allowing gay marriage. The rest to he said about this is probably obvious.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed an increasing "anti-intellectual" backlash in the USA since the turn of the century.

I know that it's an anecdotal observation on my part, but it sure seems to me that there is one hell of a lot of confusion in our country as to what is or is not a desirable trait.

In my profession I interact with a very broad cross section of people around the country on a daily basis.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a variant of..... "I'm a redneck, and I'm proud of it" (no offense meant to true rednecks!).

So many proudly wear the scarlet R as if it were a red badge of courage that it makes me really wonder which end is up. It's a mindset that mystifies me regardless of how much I strive to understand it.

The amateur "shrink" in me tells me that it's somewhat of a defensive mechanism for many who, for whatever reason, find it convenient to defend their position by rationalizing their ignorance in such a manner that it allows them to disagree on an issue without ever actually having to address the specifics of that issue.

We've seen it over and over these past few years in the political arena. Candidate "X" is criticized by their opponent (or the press) for their position on issue "Y". Instead of responding to the specifics of the critique of their stance on the issue, "X" will respond by attempting to discredit the criticism by attacking the credibility of the critic.

For those who have some sense of history of politics in our country, this is simply a variation of one of the primary rules of debate of politics.

"Re-state the question in terms that you want to deal with, and then answer your own re-stated question".

It has worked successfully for many years, and now it has morphed into another phase that the general electorate seem to find acceptable.

In the end, it reminds me of the citizens of Rome cheering for the lions in the Coliseum. All they really wanted was blood, as if it would somehow ease their own dissatisfaction with their daily lives.

I can't help but wonder if that is not the operable premise hidden in the recesses of the minds of so many people today?

And what is the root cause of this phenomenon?

There have been a number of threads in the lounge discussing it. Like the roosters always coming back to their roost.....

.......Education, or the lack of it.

I agree Education is central, but tied to this is that fundamentalist religion of whatever persuasion (and as we're talking about America, born-again Christians I guess), pushes strongly for not being CURIOUS. The only thing it seems to be okay to be curious about is Jesus or maybe the rest of the bible, but being curious outside of this is a VERY BAD THING to fundamentalists, it seems to me.


Now stifling curiousity not only leads to poor education, it is actually a feedback mechanism to surpress decent education. In addition it stifles understanding of , well, 'other worlds that these', so other cultures and views are easily dismissed. This means no empathy or two-way dialogue can occur in any sort of overt or healthy way, and you get demonisation of entire countries, other religions etc.

Fundamental Christianity is really a big old monkey on America's back that Europe has mostly shaken off, just as Fundamental Islamism is an even bigger monkey on mainly Islamic Nation-States.

I couldn't agree more with you!

The bedrock of education is curiousity.

If you're taught from an early age that your religion (whatever it is) has all the answers, what is there to be curious about?

Machiavellian in extremis, and time tested and powerful.

Relgions are indeed extremely powerful self-propagating meme-complexes in the evolutionary stream of the mind, and they didn't become so by allowing adherents ways of thinking that weaken their hold. They are here because they stood the test of time, just like any species is here because it survived, and the more successful ones are dominant because they became very good at surviving and spreading.


Not that I wish to say 'religion is bad' though, I think religion has provided a useful framework and done a lot of good (and bad, honestly), and I approach religious belief in anyone with respect unless they start spouting hate or acting as if certain allegorical stories are fact - that I cannot abide.

Hey, look at all of this religious talk in the politics thread. I guess The Lounge is officially like our government.

Separation of Church and State.

hehe.........

As the line between both subjects appears to have become increasingly blurred these past dozen years or so, is there really anything approaching true separation of church and state?

Myrtle, honestly, it's sort of weird to me. For my entire life (that I followed politics) it's been entirely blurred and the idea of separating church and state seems laughable to me, considering how it actually is.

Ideally, I think it's brilliant. But I haven't ever lived through a time when it was separated at all.

Ditto. That would be absolutely astonishing. I'd give it another century.

As soon as I saw your post dealing with christians, I immediately started thinking about muslims. It reminded me of what I had read of a middle Eastern country, but I can't recall which one. However, the article said that most college students majored in Islamic studies and well over 90%(something like 95% I think) of post-baccalaureate degrees were in Islamic studies. The article made the point, which seems hard to refute, that a country in which that happens has little chance of keeping up with the modern world, much less progressing.

Re: anti-intellectualism in America, it has long been a prominent aspect of the American character, and unfortunately it does seem to be picking up speed. As time goes by and the same process seems to continually obtain, I find it harder and harder to believe there can still be so much more left to lose, but repeatedly wind up disappointed afresh. The wonderful historian Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" was one hell of a ripping read about it.

When I grew up it was still a point of the country's pride, and largely unobjected to even by people who were quite religious.