Ridiculing Religion And Other Irrational Beliefs
I am starting a new thread, because I do not want to be blamed as an alleged monster making fun of cripples and this accusation was getting out of the scope of the discussion about soulmates.
I claim: Every religious and other irrational belief and every behavior based upon such beliefs are so preposterous and ludicrous, that this justifies ridicule and making fun of it. This is independent of who is afflicted with the irrationality and of the reasons to behave irrationally.
This ridicule is principally justified by the irrationality. Hurting the feelings of the misguided believers is not justified, so the ridiculing has to be restricted to be done in a way, that they do not know it.
I told about having been to Lourdes and discreetly having a good laughter about the weird spectacle of the irrational religious behaviors. This does not imply laughing about the unfortunate and tragic situation of cripples and sick people. They have my compassion and my sympathy.
The evaluation of a person's situation and the evaluation of a person's method of coping with a situation are independent. Compassion with a person's unfortunate situation does not require automatic respect for weird coping, no matter if the coping is the belief in a miracle at Lourdes or in homeopathy or any other woo-woo.
The availability or lack of having a choice is the decisive difference: Becoming sick and crippled is not a choice. Making a fool of oneself by going to Lourdes is a choice. It is this choice, that justifies the laughter.
What about the Darwin award? Are the people, who have invented it also monsters? Does their laughing at weird ways of getting killed really preclude their having compassion with the dead persons and those grieving?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
Gotcha!
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
I find it odd that this went on for four pages (plus the comments in the other thread) when what you are describing really doesn't sound like a big deal one way or the other. Your behaviour, as you describe it, seems entirely ordinary and largely innocuous.
Well, look on the bright side; you started out with a mole hill, but you were so loved by others that they took that very mole hill built it up into a mountain in your honour.
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Permalink Reply by Michael on -
Believers actually expect to receive scourges of cruel mocking as sharing the stripes of Christ. In fact they welcome how much they are suppose to suffer for his Name. In the limit they sing hymns as they are burning to death on Vatican Hill as Rome is illuminated as under Nero, the appearance of the Beast of Rome. This is also prophesied to happen in the future when the EU morphs into Imperial Rome ruled by the wicked one to come as prophesied, by II Thessalonians, and the Revelation.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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It's a pity that no one prophesied your return, or I would have made it a point not to be here.
I'm curious Miguel, from which of the anonymously written four gospels did you hear about the stripes of Christ? How much faith can you place in a gospel written by an unknown author without the courage to identify himself? How do you know he was there? How do you know he witnessed what he reported? An amazing number of reporters in Viet Nam spent their time in Saigon bars, and reported what they gleaned from returning troops as if it was their own eye-witness testimony - were the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John similar to those? If you say no, how can you tell, since they couldn't bother to identify themselves?
We know that the actual Mark and Luke weren't there, and since Matthew copied "Mark's" gospel, often verbatim, instead of telling the story in his own words, we knnow that "Matthew" wasn't there either, which leaves John, son of Zebedee, who totally discounts the famous "fishers of men" story, so how can you believe any of the four? Which must leave you with the big question, did Yeshua ever actually exist, or was he fabricated in an effort to reform the Jewish religion?
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Permalink Reply by Michael on
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Nero unwittingly burned the oracles of God alive. The world would have been better off if he burned all written Gospels and let the living ones go. It is the living oracles that prophesy and perform miracles. I say throw all translations into the dumpster and pray God that he sends his living oracles again. " How long oh Lord, Holy and True, will you not redeem our blood from those that dwell upon the earth?
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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And I say, throw the whole Bible in the dumpster and get it over with. I don't suppose I could get you to jump in there with it --?
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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Please do - I shall await with baited breath (I baited it this morning, I'm trying to catch crawdads --).
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Permalink Reply by Arcus on -
And Stilicho, the ardent Christian, burned the Sibylline books shortly before the decline of Rome accelerated greatly. According to the poet Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, all disasters which were to befall Rome was caused by this most Christian act.
History seems to favor Roman paganism.
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Permalink Reply by Michael on
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I see nothing Christian in Stilichos' career as commander of the Western Empires' army. And his destruction of the Sibylline books may just be siding with his Nicene friends.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on -
The Darwin awards are an invaluable reminder that the circumstances of our deaths just may end up defining us. They may very well have saved my life numerous times when, just as I seriously considered a very dangerous dare, I shuddered in fear of my last thought being the hilarious headline that would be my epitaph.
I see it as my duty to point out to fundies, at every given opportunity, that their grandchildren are very likely to look back on them with shame. This cannot be done without pointing out the ludicrous nature of their delusions. Even though I can't persuade the fundy that I'm ridiculing, the observation of that ridicule by other fundies very often curbs their eagerness to publicly defend their bizarre doctrines.
Shame them at every given turn!
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